A Cambria Slice of Life

BEST OF: Small world at a rest stop

2008-09-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, by keeping open minds in unlikely spots, we can learn what a small world it really is.

This time, we’d paused at a Highway 5 rest area. The drive from Sacramento to Paso Robles is a long one, and when you’ve done it more than once …. well, you’ve done it. It doesn’t take long to lose the thrill.

The view doesn’t vary much along most of the way, only from brown back to green when the weather morphs from sizzling hot and dry to doggone cold, windy and rainy.

Heading for home, we’re old horses pointed toward the barn --- we want to get there, get unpacked (ugh) and get on with it.

So those rest stops are tiny oases of relief, in more ways than one.

We walk around and stretch, sometimes chatting idly with others. Lots of other folks are doing the same things. We may all march to a different drummer, but by gosh, we’re in lockstep parading around those picnic tables, getting blood flowing again to our frozen-in-position muscles.

Once in a while, there are delightful surprises, such as the virtuoso violinist practicing under the shaded canopy of trees, or a trio of identical tow-headed toddlers romping in the grass and giggling.

This time, as we strolled, we watched a mid-aged woman showing off her low-slung motor home to a couple of strangers.

We’d seen similar RV models and had mused whether 6’1” husband Richard would fit inside comfortably, or if he’d be forever condemned to walking around in a “Planet of the Apes”-style crouch mode.

“Can we see inside, too?” we asked. “We’ve always wondered about….”

“Come oooonnnn in,” interrupted a couple of other women who were busily slapping sandwiches together in the vehicle’s tiny kitchenette.

We browsed and chatted, but eventually, we had to get back on the road or we’d be unpacking at midnight.

As we turned to leave, the woman outside the rig stared at me. “I know you from someplace,” she said. “I wonder ….”

Richard began to guffaw. There we were, in the wilds of Merced County, where I’d have bet good money I wouldn’t have been able to find a single soul I’d ever met before. It gave further credence to the family joke that he can’t take me anywhere without running into someone who knows me.

Obviously, we all were completely out of context, so we started trading locations, times and occupations and names. We got back to the 1980s, and she began to laugh.

“Of course I know you,” she said. “I’m Rita Nunes. I was assistant to Deborah Weldon,” a former head of Hearst Castle and the State Park areas attached to it. “You two had the bakery then, and you did catering for us up on the hilltop,” Rita recalled.

Dick and I took a quick mental jaunt down a culinary memory lane.

Hearst Castle is historic turf, and before we could serve food there, we had to swear on a stack of Julia Child cookbooks that we wouldn’t do anything to harm, sully or make the castle even the slightest bit dirty.

Then, caterers had to carry everything up at least 20 steps to get to any place where they could conceivably serve food.

Equipment we took up full, we brought back down empty. But after a long day on your feet, somehow empty didn’t feel any lighter. And you took everything back out with you, including leftovers and the trash.

About 4,786 steps later, the night started to get incredibly long.

But, even with angry feet and aching backs, we shared an unquestionable thrill in providing fine food to beautiful people in that one-of-a-kind locale.

We served luxe luncheons in a guest house, appetizers at fund-raisers, desserts on the patio and more.

And Richard and I were proud-as-punch parents at one outdoor charity event, working hard ourselves and watching our chef-son Brian at the appetizer “crepe bar.” He chatted up the guests as his flying hands made hundreds of the small pancakes. He filled them to order with brie-almond pate or tiny shrimp and scallops in a lemony salmon cream laced with dill and fennel.

As the sun set that night, guests toasted their good fortune, and we blessed our own luck at being where we were, with each other.

But that was long ago, in another life, as Rita and I agreed. With a couple of big, shared hugs for good traveling, she climbed back into the motor home with her aunt and cousin.

As she waved a vigorous goodbye, she leaned back out the door and said, “Say hello to everyone for me.”

Rita, I just did.

This column appeared first Oct. 14, 2004 in The Cambrian. It is also available at www.thecambrian.com and under the Opinion/Columns link at www.sanluisobispo.com.

One "H" of a teacher

2008-09-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

A few years ago at the San Simeon Chamber of Commerce office, a tourist gestured toward the chamber’s manager and said to me, “She’s such a lady! And she’s so smart. She should have been a teacher.”

Bingo! That manager is Helen Leopold, a beloved, legendary Cambria first-grade instructor.
Her 90th birthday is Sept. 30. This column is a happy-birthday surprise for her.

Helen is every inch a lady. For decades, she taught by inspiring her students, not bullying them. Even her gently pealing, oh-so-contagious laugh is ladylike, but it’s seasoned with a bell-toned twist of sparkly-eyed mischief.

That’s Helen, called “H” by her friends and family.

As a teacher, she used ground-breaking techniques, training youngsters how to learn, how to study and how to enjoy doing both. In her classroom, she required proper deportment, penmanship, study habits … and fun.

Carol Stoner, now the grammar school’s principal, said, “Her passion was reading, and teaching her students how to read.”

And Helen kept coming back, retiring two or three times before it stuck. Even then, she continued working as a substitute teacher, and tutored students through 2007.

Stoner said, “She’s such a vibrant person, and so physically active. She played tennis forever … She’s an inspiration and role model to so many people of the importance of staying active and continuing to contribute to your community.”

Helen has managed the San Simeon chamber office for 15 years.

She also taught other teachers. Christine, one adult student of some 40 years ago, wrote an essay about her master teacher and mentor.

School recesses would find Helen “exuberantly racing to kick a ball or gleefully jumping rope,” Christine wrote. “As long as Helen was surrounded by children and nature, she was happy. Pleasurable walks on the beach or through the pines ended in a collection of delicate kelp, unusually patterned bark or colorful leaves to be carefully displayed on the counter like a sacred gift from earth. She eagerly shared this endless enthusiasm and respect for the wonders of life with her fortunate pupils.”

Teacher Christine Leopold knows her subject well. She married one of Helen’s sons, Mark Leopold, now a San Luis Obispo dentist.

According to family historian Laurel Leopold of Cambria, Helen was born in Santa Maria, and “knew what she wanted to do … be a teacher … at the age of 6.”

Helen attended junior college in Fullerton while working as a waitress at the old Knott’s Berry Farm. At a big-band dance in 1939, she met future husband Warren Leopold.

In 1941, Warren enlisted in the Army. Helen, an English major, graduated from U.C. Berkeley. The couple married and moved to Carmel. Helen worked at Fort Ord. And when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that December, Warren’s regiment transferred to Alaska.

In 1948, home designer Warren built his first Cambria project, the “Crazy House.” Eventually, the footloose family landed in Big Sur, where Helen began teaching.

Laurel said, “From the beginning, she had an instinct about how to teach.”

Helen taught first through eighth grades at Pacific Valley from about 1957 to 1963. Laurel recalled the fun. “She’d put on dances and potlucks, and she got old reel movies from Hollywood, and we’d play them on an old- fashioned projector.”

The family included four children — Mark, Laurel, Eric and David, now a Cambria sculptor/carpenter. When Eric was diagnosed with cancer, the family moved to Cambria to be closer to hospitals and medical care.

A year or so after Eric’s death in 1963, Helen started teaching Cambria students. She created a first grade phenomenon, playing classical music in the classroom and customizing her curriculum to match her students’ needs using Cal Poly math techniques and the Fairchild Phonics Reading Program.

“That was her secret weapon, like a jet-propelled, perfect reading program,” Laurel said. “She couldn’t believe she was being paid to do what she loved so much. She was so rewarded by working with those children.”

Decades later, many of those young students describe their Mrs. Leopold with glowing testimonials. That includes our youngest son Sean. “She was my favorite teacher ever,” he said, “a really nice person who taught us a lot.”

Now that’s a testimonial. Happy birthday H!

Editor’s note: In June, Helen Leopold’s family honored her with a bench placed outside the Cambria Grammar School’s library. A plaque on the bench created by artist Terry Konczak reads, “Helen Leopold: She loved teaching and sharing the joy of learning with children.”

BEST OF: Revisiting VCR fever

2008-09-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

This column ran in The Cambrian Nov. 19, 1987, long before TIVO, iPods and widespread reliance on the Internet. Because we are modified Luddites to the core, we still use a VHS video recorder more often than the fancy-dancy DVD recorder that we keep forgetting how to program. I’ve never, ever downloaded a movie, perhaps because we don’t watch as many films or even as much TV as we used to when my mom was alive.

I must beg for your indulgence and understanding as I confess something awful. Maybe there’s hope. Maybe we can be saved, even though there’s no known cure and the disease is progressive.

We are VCR junkies.

We were OK at first. Mom only used the Sony BetaMax to tape shows we’d have missed, or that she wanted to keep for future reference. Innocent enough, but those are the first symptoms of decline, obvious to those who are aware of the addictive potential.

The next clue? After her first Sony machine died of microchip fatigue, Mom went right out and bought another Beta set. VCR fever had her in its grip, despite her protestations that we had to have it to play all those tapes she had accumulated.

A likely story.

She merrily continued to add to her collection of old movies, ice-skating performances and competitions, nature shows, political speeches and special documentaries.

The tape cartridges began taking over the world. We had to shift around two long shelves of books to make room for the vast array of videotapes, and some really good books wound up in the great book-graveyard in the shed. Shameful.

In the meantime, to add to the woes of a compulsive VCR user, the Cambria area caught up with the rest of the world, with its very own video rental stores and outlets, burgeoning with video tapes to rent.

All of them were on VHS format tapes.

It was a dilemma. Sure, we could have driven in to watch the movies at the theater. But my mother was in the midst of chemotherapy for her lung cancer, so watching movies at home was preferable. And, to be truthful, we had never gone to movie theaters very often before, so I can’t blame it all on her.

Besides, I make better popcorn than they do, and we can buy Milk Duds cheaper at Bob and Jan’s.

We were hooked and didn’t even know it.

Mom took the plunge, and got a VHS VCR, too, which then sat side-by-side with the Sony.
The video compulsion was in full command as she quickly racked up “Out of Africa,” “Crocodile Dundee” and “Running Scared.” Great stuff.

As bakery owner-operators, we found ourselves not getting much sleep. Late to bed, extraordinarily early to rise makes a baker cranky when he nods off, nose first into the pumpernickle dough.

Unfortunately, we could rent and watch the good movies a lot faster than the video stores could get in new ones, and the VCR compulsion was getting stronger.

In a burst of strength, we eliminated entire categories from consideration. Anything with Chuck Norris in it. Anything with a ghost, gun, motorcycle, dead body or blood on the cover, or the word “Porky” in the title.

After all, we were only sick, not crazy.

Still, we wound up renting third-rate movies, just to see if they had any kick to them at all. If it had a good star, a good writer, a great director or even an intriguing title, at $2.50 a hit, how bad could it be? Don’t ask.

It was sad to watch the compulsion take hold.

We watched Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier trying to rip off gangsters they’d already ripped off once before and been caught at. With that cast, it should have been wonderful. It wasn’t. We watched the whole thing, and to this day, we still don’t understand why.

We watched Michael Caine on some God-forsaken island with guerilla warriors who broke into a radio station and started singing their demands over the air. No matter how sick we were, 10 minutes of that was all we could take.

We tried to quit. Really we did. Still, we wound up watching five minutes of Dudley Moore as a psychotic psychiatrist with pretensions, five minutes of Sally Fields and a short-haired, pre-plastic-surgery Arnold Schwarzenegger and little more than the opening credits on five or 10 other loser films.

Mind you, all of these were movies we never would have driven 35 miles to see at a theater, or even tried to stay up to watch at 12:48 a.m. on cable.

VCR fever had us in its grip.

Finally, we were down to such winners as “Red Desert Penitentiary.” “Maximum Overdrive.” “Amazons in Jail.”

Looking back, were we really that desperate? Had our obsession progressed so far that there was no hope left?

Anyone for popcorn?

Politics on a gurney

2008-09-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

There I was, flat on my back on a gurney at the doctor’s office, talking politics.

It felt really strange, as if I’d walked into the wrong movie and couldn’t read the subtitles.

Physicians usually shy away from conversational minefields such as politics — presumably for fear of scaring away a patient whose leanings and opinions are profoundly different. Other wise professionals also avoid discussing their opinions with clients: beauticians, sales people, motel clerks, contractors, mechanics. Reporters. Heck, even babysitters. As business people, we’re much better off keeping our traps shut and our preferences to ourselves.

Silence is golden.

The same thing is true in discussions with family members and friends. It’s a waste of time to argue when it can’t accomplish anything and could cause hard feelings. If you know your brother is a rabid fan of a candidate you hate, and you’re not ever, ever going to change your brother’s mind, it’s much better to talk about his work, his kids, the weather or, “Say, how about those 49ers?”

I’m sure the doctor knows all that. But he was intrigued by my job as a reporter, and that seemed to override his normal caution. He said, “I imagine this will be a really interesting year for you.”

“Every year is interesting in Cambria,” I said.

He replied, “No, I mean because the presidential election is this fall.”

I told him that, while I certainly follow national politics, I’m a community reporter and, as such, I cover localized issues. I leave Washington coverage to McClatchy’s national reporters.

As he examined my aching limb, the doctor asked me for my thoughts on presidential politics. It seemed rude to ignore him, not to mention risky. While my errant body part may not function perfectly, I’m fond of it, I need it and I don’t want it tweaked just because the rest of me seems to be impolite somehow.

However, reporters have to be even more careful than physicians about publicly stating their opinions. So I spoke in generalities: “I think we hire a president or any other candidate for public office to be our spokesperson, to speak for us when we cannot or talk to people we’d never have the chance to meet or confront.

“I feel the best candidates are people who speak well in all circumstances … one-on-one, in a group, in a debate or in front of an audience of thousands.”

The doctor said, “We haven’t had that for a while in Washington, have we?”

I mumbled and waffled a little, still not wanting to show my own preferences even though I thought I’d figured out pretty quickly where his loyalties lie.

I said, “For me, the right candidate is one who can take a bunch of people who disagree, talk with them until they reach some sort of consensus, and have everybody leave that room feeling as if they’ve won something.”

Without batting an eyelash, the doctor emphatically said, “No s—t!” Immediately, he caught his slip of the tongue, blushed scarlet and spent the next 10 minutes apologizing. I kept reassuring him that I share his passion about the topic, and not to worry about a minor mis-speak.

But the conversation seemed to underscore the intensity with which many voters are approaching this election season, whether on a national or local level.

Well, isn’t it about time? Isn’t it refreshing?

It’s so discouraging when voters don’t give a hoot, when they say they’d rather cast their ballots for “none of the above” and few people can name the candidates or what they stand for.

It’s so much healthier for us as a country and a community to care passionately about issues and candidates, and be willing to put our time, money and enthusiasm on the line to back up our mouths and our opinions.

Commitment of the electorate is the spine of the body politic. It’s what keeps politicians honest, or trips up those who are not. It’s what makes us different than a monarchy or a dictatorship.

We are the difference. We can make a difference. We must make a difference.

Just maybe not on a doctor’s gurney …

BEST OF: Feeding guests on the Atkins Diet

2008-08-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

Soon, the Tanners will have guests for a week, all of whom are on the Atkins Diet. Since we dine closer to the vegetarian side of the dietary street, so to speak, this is going to be interesting.

As I understand it, Atkins' menus include protein, salad stuff and other skinny veggies, salad dressings, bacon and butter. Period.

I know that Atkins, the Zone and similar diets have different phases, wherein bits of carbohydrates are reintroduced — half an apple here, a spoonful of sweet potato there. And there are many new low-carb, sugar-substitute, phony-foods out there.

I’m not sure yet where my company is on the dietary ladder. So I’ll plan for the worst-case menu scenario.

My mind boggles, then starts winging its way around the calendar. Imagine a Labor Day barbecue on the Atkins diet. No garlic bread. No potato salad. No corn or shortcake. Sob.

I’d have to watch football on TV, because there wouldn’t be anything else left to do.

My mind and my doctor lecture me. We have friends who’ve lost significant weight on the diet. As a culture and individuals, we’re way too fat. If you can find a way to lose weight that doesn’t kill you in the process, do it.

But with no gall bladder, some kidney problems and a family history of osteoporosis, I’ve always talked myself out of going on Atkins, despite having fond memories of my life’s 15-minute “thin times” dancing in my head.

While there is some anecdotal and study evidence that the diet helps, rather than hinders, keeping cholesterol levels down, I’m not 100 percent convinced.

And while studies show your life is longer when you’re thinner, nobody’s been able to accurately quantify “longer.” How much more life will I gain if I lose? Would the deprivation be worth it now, while I feel good, to be a size six for a few more months toward the end of my life, when I may not?

Yes, I’m rationalizing, folks, and, awk! Time marches on. The guests are coming, the guests are coming. My hostess genes began wringing their little hands. This is not how my grandmother and mother raised me to feed company. No frills. No carbs. No fun.

Then my harried shopper peeked at ephemeral silver linings lurking in the fog bank.

Usually, I plan for weeks for company, then husband Richard and I shop like human hummingbirds. Clutching our computerized shopping lists, we scurry hither, thither and yon. Buying a week’s worth of meal ingredients can lead us a merry chase countywide to find the best, most exotic or unusual.

Hey, we’re former caterers. It’s a hard habit to break.

Buying for Atkins guests would be a snap. Eggs and meat for breakfast, plus protein for the other meals, nuts to munch, selected veggies, dressing. Easy. Yes, Atkinsers can have butter, but absent lobster or crab legs I can’t afford, what can they put it on?

Being a closet Pollyanna, however, I began taking the concept further, looking around our own kitchen.

Forget supposed health benefits. If we could adopt an Atkins-like diet, just look at the money we’d save.

Better still, look at the extra space we’d have.

The cereal cupboard would be empty, as would areas now stuffed with crackers, cookies, pastas, baking ingredients, mixing bowls and tools. Eight shelves worth of cookbooks would become obsolete, creating more room for knick-knacks we certainly don’t need. Even cans of fruit, Jello boxes, jam jars and slightly sweet sauces would vanish.

The bread drawer could hold whisks and spatulas, except I wouldn’t need them any more, either.

Somehow, using fancy, heart-shaped cookie cutters on hamburger patties doesn’t cut it.
What would I do with the ice-cream drawer in the freezer? Fill it with the extra ice we always need. Candy jars on the counter? Full of potpourri and unidentified found keys.

The breadmaker, blender, ice-cream maker and other specialty equipment would disappear into storage, joining other cobweb-draped, dusty relics. We’d relegate Richard’s 20-quart Hobart mixer to planter status.

There wouldn’t even be much need for a kitchen. Do it all with a coffeepot, hotplate and salad bowl. Almost everything else can be cooked on an outside barbeque.

I could live that way for a couple of weeks, even a couple of months, to make medical points with a primary care physician who tends to cluck a lot and make noises about set-points and cholesterol levels.

But never again to make homemade whole-wheat bread, a fresh-strawberry smoothie, blueberry pancakes, brownies or even freshly steamed brown rice just because they sound good?

What happens when we have visitors who eat normal meals?

What about Richard’s legendary chocolate truffles? Or grandchildren, who want to help make cookies, popcorn balls and Grandma’s traditional coffeecake?

No, this would never work at Tanner Manor.

So our company will arrive, and we’ll feed them Atkins while sneaking our bananas and whole-wheat English muffins on the side. Then we’ll go back to our rounded lives, menus and bodies, contemplating the dietary restrictions we’ll have to work around for our next batch of visitors.

This column appeared on Nov. 14, 2003 in The Cambrian.

The strait answer

2008-08-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

“There are no gold medals, no loving cups and no elaborately inscribed certificates to laud David Yudovin's all-time world record” achievements.
Margot Smith, The Cambrian, July 19, 1990,

In Beijing, the world’s winningest Olympic athlete Michael Phelps has kept millions of people awestruck. His swimming accomplishments are flat-out astonishing. Just imagine winning almost enough Olympic gold medals for a game of checkers!

But in the Azores, on the North Coast and worldwide, people also are intrigued by the latest adventure for David Yudovin, Cambria’s world-class swimmer.

He and wife Beth left home Aug. 13 for Horta on Faial Island, where he’ll tackle more first-ever swims, this time across open ocean channels in the Portuguese archipelago.

The accomplishments of Cambria’s super swimmer are featured in books, magazines, Web sites and documentaries, and are enshrined in the Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. Now, Azorean media is all over the story, and there’s even talk of a half-hour TV show about Yudovin and his swims.

His lifelong quest to be first across a strait doesn’t produce trophies, only pride for achieving his personal goals. “I don’t get medals, I get American Express bills,” he quipped, “and I don’t even have a Gold Card.”

Like Phelps, Yudovin not only sets and accomplishes his goals, he shatters them.

For instance, in about 6 hours and 20 minutes in April, the 56-year-old leukemia and heart-attack survivor swam 10 nautical miles between Papeete, Tahiti, and Mo'orea, French Polynesia. He powered through big swells of 80-degree-plus tropical water, under intense sun and in dicey weather.

Nobody of any age had ever swum across that channel.

He already had aced channel swimming’s “triple crown”: The English Channel, Catalina to the California coast and Cook Strait in New Zealand. He was the oldest athlete to complete the latter swim, at the age of 52 in 2004.

In each of eight other channels worldwide, Yudovin was the first to swim across.

This time, he aims to conquer the major channels between various Azorean islands, one after another. Nobody’s ever done that before, either, or even swum across one of them.

One really good reason why is the Portuguese man o’war.

Warm waters around the Azores are laced with the picturesque but dangerous jellyfish-like creature, more plentiful recently perhaps because of global climate changes.

Yudovin knows about jellyfish stings, having been attacked by thousands of them during his swim across the Sunda Strait in Indonesia. However, men o’war are world-class stingers and are in a pain-and-danger class all by themselves.

Fortunately, Azorean waters are cooler now than they were in February when Yudovin trained there for a month (and got stung twice). Men o’war don’t like cooler water, he said, so there should be fewer there now. He hopes.

Enthusiastic Azorean officials aren’t taking any chances. They’re requiring a doctor on board the accompanying boat for all swims, plus a wide variety of medical supplies to combat any emergency.

Yudovin’s swimming schedule depends on the whims of Atlantic tides about 950 miles from Lisbon. He has already powered across the first 5-nautical-mile channel (on Aug. 20) in 2 hours 20 minutes "under perfect conditions," he said in an e-mail. Next, he'll tackle a 10-mile swim about Sept. 6 and another 10-miler about Sept. 26.

His other Azorean target channels are even longer.

If he doesn’t accomplish it all this year, Yudovin said matter-of-factly, he’ll simply go back next year.

A year ago, Yudovin told Cambria Rotarians he’d reached “the pinnacle of my swimming career,” and was going to retire from his sport and his work. He and Beth would devote much of their time to helping fellow Cambrians, he said.

Some of us were skeptical. Not of his dedication to various causes, but of his ability to step back from the call of the sea. We were right. Recently, he acknowledged, “We have learned that the pinnacle keeps moving with us.”

Now, when he and Beth are home, they balance his rigorous training schedule with delivering Meals on Wheels to shut-ins, providing free transportation to seniors and others on the Cambria Bus, and being part of the North Coast Ocean Rescue Team.

So, as long as Yudovin’s body allows it, he’ll keep on swimming, looking like a human metronome as he churns through the sea that challenges him. In the process, he’ll continue captivating the imagination of those who recognize what an exceptional, world-class athlete he is in the Olympics of life.

For more on Cambria’s world-class swimmer, go to www.davidyudovinchannelswimmer.com/

Try a little kindness

2008-08-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

It was just a little thing--a shiny piece of heavy paper folded to about 2 inches square and sporting a perky photo of an otter. Under the sea mammal's mug shot is some golden cursive writing that reads "Cambria, CA."

It's a bookmark, complete with matched magnets inside each flap. To use it, I fold the marker over the top of the last page I read. Snap! Being a good little bookmark, it won't fall out and lose my place in the process.

I buy them five or six at a time at Cambria Drug & Gift, because they're handy for those of us who read in bed at night and don't want to have to scrabble around in the covers to find a lost bookmark at 11 p. m., when all we really want to do is close the book and, finally, go to sleep.

Husband Richard and I read lots of books. We buy some, but primarily we check them out at the Cambria Public Library.

Our tri-county library cards are good at any of the branches, which is a lovely perk when we're out of town with 10 or 15 minutes to spare. (September is Library Card Sign-Up Month, so you might want to beat the rush and do it early.)

Whenever I finish a book (or decide it's not worth my time and mental effort to read it), I take out my bookmark and move it to the next book on my nightstand.

It doesn't always happen, however.

So, before husband Richard makes his weekly library trek to trade in a bagful of books we've read for those we haven't, it's always our intention to check every book for left-behind, forgotten markers.

That doesn't always happen, either.

We're well aware of our failings and foibles. So, before we ever use a new bookmark, I label the back with a self-adhesive address label (from among the hundreds sent to us so often in the mail, along with fervent pleas for donations in support of good causes).

Fortunately, when our bookmarks stay stuck in books we've returned, Cambria's lovely library ladies and genial gents find the markers and save them for us, thanks to the address labels that tell them whose bookmarks they are.

Very rarely, that doesn't happen, either.

In mid-July, I got a note from Mary Flores of Nipomo. I don't think I know any Nipomo residents, let alone a Mary Flores. I studied the envelope, trying to exercise my ESP to divine who she could be.

It didn't work. Finally, when I opened the envelope, one of our bookmarks fell out.

On a perky greeting card, Mrs. Flores had written: "Hi! I found this in a book from the Nipomo Library. Since you have a return-address label on it I assumed you would like your cute little bookmark returned. I know I would like it back if it were mine. Mary Lou."

How delightful! I had just received an act of random kindness from a stranger, a thoughtful gesture that cost her a snippet of time, the price of the card and a 42-cent postage stamp.

Yes, it was just a little thing, but it made me smile for days.

So, of course, as soon as I could, I stopped at the drug store to buy more bookmarks.

I stuck one in a bright "Thank You!" greeting card with a note.

"How kind you were to send back my bookmark. I try not to leave them in the books I read, but sometimes I forget. One sweet kindness deserves another, so I hope you'll enjoy having your own bookmark, and it will remind you what a nice person you are. Kathe."

Now, I do know someone in Nipomo, and we have a common bond. When we look at our little otter faces, maybe we'll think of each other and smile. Perhaps one of these days, we'll even meet somewhere in between, over tea and scones, and talk about books we love and other shared interests.

It was just a little thing, you see, but you just never know what might happen because of it.

Contact Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy ...

2008-07-31T21:30:00.000-07:00

You might be from the coast of Central California in summer if ...

l. You know the state flower — Mildew (good one, Jeff!).

2. You’d shoot your cat before you’d throw aluminum cans, a Dasani water bottle or an empty “Two-Buck Chuck” wine jug into the trash.

3. You use the expression “sun break” and know what it means.

4. You know more than 10 ways to order coffee, even at Taco Bell.

5. You’d feel overdressed wearing a suit anywhere except to your own funeral.

6. You know how to pronounce Cayucos, Cuyama, Cholame, Pfieffer Big Sur and (last but certainly not least) San Luis Obispo.

6a. You can talk about towns like Buttonwillow and Shafter without getting the giggles.

7. You can point out the difference to wave-watchers between kelp and an otter, or between a swimming sea lion or harbor seal.

8. You know 52 kinds of birds, because they all come to your back yard to raid the cat-food dish.

9. You can identify at 100 yards whether the whale is a gray, humpback, orca or wishful thinking.

10. You know the different nuances between Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai food, and you can cook all four very well, thank you.

11. You feel justifiably smug when the temperatures don't vary by more than a few degrees, night or day. “Better than 110,” you mumble as you develop mold in your nasal passages and grow kelp between your toes.

12. You break out the 50 SPF sunscreen and the Tilly hat any time the weatherman says there's a chance of partial sun through the coastal fog.

13. You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50, but still wear your hiking boots and parka. You switch to your sandals when it gets above 60, but keep the socks on.

14. You’ve been to Hearst Castle, Pozo, the Far Western, the Oceano Dunes, the missions and most of the restaurants in the county. Or at least you say you have.

15. You measure distance in hours or portions thereof, plus degrees. “It’s only 20 minutes to Morro Bay, but it’s 30 minutes and 40 degrees to Paso.”

16. You know the difference between an ag easement, a conservation easement and having land in the Williamson Act, and know they're all better than having another 650 homes in the viewshed.

17. You use a down comforter in the summer and a light blanket in winter.

18. You regard the other side of the Santa Lucias as “over there.” You know it's another country, because the terrain AND the people are sooooooo different.

19. You design your child’s Halloween costume in layers, thin enough so, if the weather's as hot as it usually is, the kid won't faint, but sized to fit under a raincoat or over a turtleneck, just in case.

20. You carry jumper cables in your car and know how to use them, whether you're a man or woman. You also know how to change a tire, because at 9:30 at night on Highway 1, that's probably your only way home.

21. You may be a blue-hair, but, by God, it probably looks black or auburn to the rest of the world, if they don't look too closely.

22. You know all the important seasons: Tourist Season (spring through fall) which coincides nicely with Visiting Family Season; Rainy (can be a day or six months); Dry (can be one day or all year); Windy (April through June, plus anytime there’s a big, special event with a tent); Road Repairs (summer); Brown Hills (fall); Shopping (winter or all year); and Holiday (very similar to Tourist/Family).

23. You know half the fun of going to “The City” (San Francisco) or “The Pit” (Los Angeles) is griping about it, before and after the trip.

24. You know your neighbors, often for blocks or miles in any direction. You don’t agree with all (any) of them, but if they’re sick, or in an accident, or there’s been a tragedy or death in the family, you’re there in a flash to do food, laundry, dusting, babysitting. You’ll make funeral arrangements, or call the relatives, the cops or the doctor. Then, when the crisis is over, you’ll all go back to kvetching at each other, just like always.

25. You are fully aware you’re among the luckiest of humans, because you live on the coast of Central California, the most beautiful place in the world, fog or no fog.

This column ran first in The Cambrian on June 26, 2003, and subsequently in The Tribune. Comments are encouraged here, or you can e-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

Are Wii having fun yet?

2008-07-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

I feel so stupid. I need to find someone who’ll teach me to Wii.

You don’t speak Nintendo? The wildly popular Wii game console is the über-interactive game that even the most frantic Christmas shoppers couldn’t find anywhere last year unless they camped out in a Costco parking lot at 3 a.m. For days. Or dashed to Best Buy at 7 a.m. as soon as they saw a telltale ad in the Sunday paper.

In Cambria, we’re many miles from the big-box or discount stores that were the only places getting large shipments of Wii consoles (if you can call a dozen units at a time “large”).

There was no way we could beat everybody else to the draw. By the time we had our Tribune in hand, all the other potential buyers who lived in SLO or Paso already were lined up, Visa cards in hand.

Fortunately, the granddaughters for whom we wanted the Wii hadn’t requested one, and didn’t know we were looking for one, so they weren’t disappointed Christmas morning when we weren’t able to produce one.

Discouraged, I announced that if we stumbled across a Wii for sale, we’d buy it. But continue my relentless, time-consuming search? Not a chance.

Then in April, Husband Richard and I were window-shopping our way through a Bay Area mall.

As we strode past a game store, he saw an overhead sign inside that said, “Wii games.” A few steps later, he mused, “I wonder if they have the consoles.”

I U-turned so fast, I almost spun us both like a top. I pranced in and asked if the store might possibly have Wii consoles for sale.

“You’re in luck,” the hip young game-seller said brightly. “We just got our biggest order yet, a dozen of them.” Before he could blink, I yanked out my credit card and said, “I’ll take two,” one for the girls, and one, by golly, for Grandma and Grandpa. The game looked like fun.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the salesman said. “Only one to a customer.”

I’m sure my face fell. “But we need one for our granddaughters in Davis,” I said dejectedly, “and we want one for us, too.”

The hip young game-seller looked at us and smiled broadly, perhaps struck by the ludicrousness of people our age determined to own a Wii. He stage-whispered, “If you can give me two different credit cards, I can make it work.”

Now, I suspect I’m better trained in Nintendo than most grandmas. The boys and I have played video games together since the 1960s, gradually progressing from the now venerable Atari consoles to newer, better systems.

I got hooked on certain classical programs … such as Pac Man and Tetris … never the shoot-’em-up, beat-’em-up ones or the games in which Mario chases his tail through 2,876 levels.

Did I say hooked? When our house was destroyed by fire in April 1994, my Mother’s Day gift (from a wildly giggling son) was a new Gameboy.

“I’ll bet I’ve got the only mom in the world who needed one of these for Mother’s Day,” Sean said as he gasped for air between hysterics.

Through the years, I’ve learned a lot from video games:
• Eye-hand coordination.
• Strategy — put that piece here and the next one there and I’ll get a Tetris!
• Patience, because the one piece you need doesn’t show up for a long, long, long time.
• Self-control, or I’d take a sledgehammer to the game when it’s just beaten me for the 15th time in a row.
• And, most important, when to give up and go read a book.

But this time, I’m stumped. The thick owner’s manual for the Wii is like cyber-Sanskrit.

To play, you transfer what you already know about, say, tennis, to a game that you physically play while also working the controller. Using your best tennis swings, you must keep a death grip on the controller, so you don’t wind up flinging it through the TV screen or out the window while you “hit” the cyber ball.

Tricky, yes?

Guess I’ll have to find a clever 6-year-old to teach me.

Just imagine how dumb that makes me feel.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribune news.com.

Wildfires forge bonds

2008-07-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

Coming home from San Luis Obispo the other day was like driving into a Stage 3 smog alert in the Los Angeles basin. Smoke and ash melded with fog into a brownish-gray haze hovering over our usually air-pristine canyons, hills and beaches.

A remarkably early wildfire season surrounded us with disasters to our north, east and south. The only good, smoke-free wind was one from due west, and there were precious few of those.

Even so, we're all devoutly counting our blessings and keeping our fingers crossed. May our good, fire-free fortune continue.

With smoke filling our eyes, noses and lungs, and sticky ash blanketing our cars and homes, everybody got a little crankier than usual.

"It's probably our cavemen ancestry," husband Richard said. "Smoke means danger, which triggers the 'fight-or-flight' response. We can't get away from it, and most of us can't fight the invader, so our bodies are at war with our emotions."

We also were fretting about our neighbors in Goleta, Lake Isabella and, especially, Big Sur.

Cambrians are inextricably linked to Big Sur-ites by much more than the 70-some miles of gorgeous scenery between the two communities.

Both seaside towns are magnets for tourists. Each is laced with hills, canyons and trees, and has a Mediterranean climate subject to drought.

There also are shared attitudes all along that stretch of Highway 1, not the least of which is a "Please, Mom, I'd rather do it myself" mindset born of living on purpose so far from metropolitan touches like movie theaters, Starbucks and even an X-ray machine.

Paradise may not be convenient, but it's worth it. Until tragedy strikes.

Some Big Sur residents told Bob Putney, Cambria's fire chief, "We thought it couldn't happen here." At the time, he was leading a strike team as part of the defense against the Basin Complex Fire that, as of Tuesday, July 8, had consumed 23 homes and 80,474 acres, closing 20 miles of world-famous Highway 1 during the peak of tourist season.

The blaze got to the back door of the famed Henry Miller Library before firefighters fought it off.

Despite the best efforts of determined firefighters, National Guardsmen, homeowners, volunteers and complete strangers, the fire rages on.

Officials estimate it will be at least the end of July before the huge blaze will be contained.

Not stopped. Not out. Contained. But who expects lightning or a big wildfire in Big Sur on June 21, or for that matter, in its sister community to the south?

Since mid-June in California, more than 500,000 acres have gone up in smoke. Fire analysts already are calling the 2008-2009 fire season "a monster."

"It can't happen here."

Guess again.

Now some Big Sur residents are seeking help (especially from those adept with their own chain saws) in clearing wide swaths of land to create defensible space against the voracious fire-fiend.

As Jack Ellwanger of Big Sur said July 3, "We have so much incendiary dead oak around that the whole region is like a tinder box."

In Big Sur, "The steep canyons explode when ignited, fire jumps fire breaks and prances along ridges. The fire has accelerated at an unparalleled pace because of excessive fuel loads...brush that has not been cleared or burned to too long."

Defensible space. Hmmm.

Sounds familiar.

In Cambria, deadline for weed-abatement chores was July 1. Knowledgeable property owners and residents already have cleared away brush and grasses, downed trees and dead leaves to help prevent a wildfire from devouring all that fuel and heading for homes along the way.

Cambrians who skirted the deadline soon will find a services- district-hired contractor in their yard and a sizeable charge for the clearing on their tax bills next year.

"It can't happen here."

Don't bet the farm on that, Charlie. The cost to Big Sur and other areas has been huge, no matter how you calculate it.

As the lung-choking smog here gradually fades back to our normal, white summer fogs, don't let the memories, the fear and the fight-or-flee instinct fade with it.

Be grateful, be aware and be prepared.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Exchanging karma

2008-07-07T06:45:00.000-07:00

“Hello, Karma Assignment Desk? I’d like to request a change of destiny, please. Whaddya mean, you can’t do that? You gave me this karma by mistake, and I want a new one.

“Why would I want different karma? I’m a community reporter and photographer, you see. No, no, sir. That’s very different from paparazzi. Thank heavens.

“So, what’s my problem? Somehow, you got my karma mixed up with somebody else’s, and I want my own back again.

“Why would I think that? Because the strangest things keep happening to me, stuff you wouldn’t expect in a nice, small town like Cambria. Just ask the tourists who visit here: Things are supposed to be placid and calm on the North Coast, even though they rarely are.

" I’ve checked the employee manual, sir, and these kinds of situations simply are not in my job description.

“Yes, I can explain myself. First there was the calf. Yes, calf, as in bovine.

“How many reporters do you know who have had a hip head-butted by a recently branded-and-neutered, 500-pound, bucking and basically ticked-off calf? Came up behind me in a rush, lowered his head and tossed me tail over Nikon, he did.

“I’d have gotten a 10 for that somersault if I been on a balance beam instead of at a round-up. Why, I was so black and blue and pink and yellow, I glowed in the dark for a week.

“Then there was that sneaky, mean gopher hole. Gopher. G-O-P-H-E-R. How could a gopher hole hurt me? I was taking pictures of a downed airplane. In San Simeon. No, not at the Hearst air strip (Hey, for a karma dude, you know a lot about the North Coast!).

“Anyhow, this pilot had problems with his gas supply and tried to land his little plane on Highway 1. He missed. Landed in a field. Scrunched the plane a bit.

“To get the best picture, I had to go down this little slope … no, I know better than to run down something like that. Too much dry grass on the ground. Too slippery. So I sat down and scooted on my, um, butt.

“No, I didn’t get my butt stuck in the gopher hole! You’ve never seen my butt, sir. (Peals of laughter from Karma Central). Hummph. Well, maybe you have.

“Anyhow, as I slid down the slope, I’d just gotten going at a good clip and my heel got caught in a gopher hole that was hiding out under all that grass. My body kept going, but my foot stopped, and my ankle twisted six ways from Sunday. That was years ago, and I still limp every time I think about it.

“And then there was the time I got run over by a Zodiac.

“No, not the astrological signs. Yes, I know that’s more up your alley. But this was one of those big, inflatable boats. There I was, minding my own business, watching the glassy-smooth ocean, getting ready to climb into the boat to go take some pictures of a bigger boat.

"Well, without a howdy-do, along came this itty-bitty wave that nobody was expecting. That Zodiac, it just hung 10 on that wave, slid over and clonked me on the knee. Not only that, it tossed me face-down at the surf-line, and then — get this — that nervy boat ran over my leg!

“Yes, sir, it’s the same leg that’s attached to the ankle. No, I’m still not walking straight.

“What did I do? I got up, checked to make sure my camera wasn’t wet, limped over to the boat and got in. Yes, I got some good pictures. Thank you for asking.

“What? You say I don’t need new karma? What I need is a new job? But I love my career, sir.

“You’re telling me if I want to stay in my line of work, the only thing you can do is exchange the karma I have with one of my associates who also want to trade? Which one do I want, you ask? Do I want to be a photographer in Iraq or a reporter in Zimbabwe? Or I could be a political writer in Washington D.C. or Sacramento? In an election year? Not a chance, Charlie.”

Pause. Pregnant one, at that.

“Sir, can I change my mind and just keep my own karma, weird as it is? Yes, I’ll learn to deal with the cows and wayward Zodiacs of life. Even in the world of karma, I think Dorothy Gale was right. There’s no place like home.”

This column ran Oct. 2, 2003, in The Cambrian.

Semi-powerless in Cambria

2008-06-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

For proof that things frequently aren’t as they seem at first glance, consider our recent electrical glitch.

I was working at my computer at 6:30 a.m. on May 22 when the lights went out.

Or so it seemed.

Yes, it did seem odd that the back-up power supply wasn’t whining, yelling and raising Cain, as it usually does when there’s no power. But I went into the kitchen anyway and grabbed our hard-wired phone to call Pacific Gas & Electric’s outage line. (A non-portable phone that’s directly tied in to AT&T lines works fine during a power outage, unless a falling tree took out the phone lines, too.)

As I dialed (800) 743-5000, I glanced at the coffee counter and saw a nightlight burning as brightly as it ever does.

Had the power gone back on, and I just didn’t notice?

I flipped the pantry’s light switch. Nothing. The refrigerator, toaster and coffeemaker worked, but the microwave oven and stove fan wouldn’t. Same in the living room, where the chandelier and fan worked, but ceiling lights and wall receptacles didn’t.

Husband Richard and I began to panic. Visions of melting wires and shorting circuits danced in our heads. Our former home burned down because of an electrical problem. So we tend to … um … react strongly, shall we say, when power sources are compromised in any way.

Finally, having determined that the off-and-on problem was consistently inconsistent throughout the house, I called our electrician. He promised to check it out.

It was a Thursday, so I wasn’t on deadline for The Cambrian’s weekly edition. But I was working on a story for The Tribune, due that afternoon. And among the powerless items in the house were my trusty portable phones.

Cell phones don’t work at our house under the best of circumstances, so I took my laptop and office chair into the kitchen, set myself up alongside our hard-wired phone and began to call my sources for interviews.

After several hours of that uncomfortable madness, the clock (battery powered) staggered toward noon. I hadn’t yet heard from the electrician, and I was getting increasingly antsy.

Then I heard a truck pulling up. Expecting the electrician, I headed outside. Surprise! It was a PG&E troubleman, driving down our street with a puzzled expression on his face.

Before he could pull away, I ran out to quiz him, asking how our house power could be half-on, half-off, and what we should be doing about it.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “We’ve got a bad trunk line along here somewhere, and I’m trying to track it down,” he continued.

“But. But,” I sputtered. “Half the connections in the house are working. How can the problem be in the power source?”

He tried to explain, but had to rush off to solve the problem. Soon, we had full power again, everywhere.

Later, I called Pete Resler, PG&E spokesman.

He said he’d never heard of that kind of problem before, but checked it out with Mark Srauenheim, distribution superintendent for the San Luis Obispo office.

Resler explained later, as power flows through transmission lines, “it’s at a higher voltage than can be used in your home. So the power goes into a transformer that steps it down to a proper voltage for your house.

When the power comes out of the transformer, it splits into two lines, he said. “Each home (unless it’s a really old house), has two service lines. Sometimes the lines will be in two separate cables, sometimes bundled as two wires in one cable.”

In the case of our neighborhood’s outage, he said, “one of the wires was faulty and you lost half the power to your house,” as did other homes around us.

The lineman “did some troubleshooting on the neighborhood circuit, identified the bad line and fixed it.”

So, if this weird thing ever happens again, I’m still going to call my electrician, just in case. But I will have finished that call to PG&E first, because things often are not as they seem to be, especially when you’re only half lit.

BEST OF: Hot times in a cool city

2008-06-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

When summertime temperatures hit 97 in Death Valley, the full-timers there put on their sweaters.

In San Francisco (or Cambria, if the truth be known), when the thermometer hovers anywhere near triple digits, it’s as if the end of the world is upon us and we’re sinking into the fires of Hell.

When we got to “The City” for our vacation that day, it was 97 degrees at Market Street and Embarcadero. The air was going nowhere fast. There was not a breeze anywhere, nor even a half-cup of fog.

It was miserable and people were downright cranky. “This never happens here,” they said in a heat-glazed daze.

Machines were working slowly, if at all. One severely overloaded cable car thought it could, thought it could make the steep trek up Powell Street, but lo and behold, it was the little engine that couldn’t. The driver had to back down and make another run at it before he could continue his route.

The City’s customary aroma — a mystical blend of soy sauce, curry, seafood, espresso, cigar smoke, ocean brine and a few unmentionables — was far overshadowed by the stench of asphalt oozing and melting in the relentless sun.

Visitors, who’d been urged by their travel agents to bring sweatshirts and warm jackets to San Francisco, were puzzled and dashing for Union Square to buy shorts and tank-tops. And that was to wear to the Top of the Mark! In their hotel rooms, overheated tourists probably slept in the shower, with the water going full blast.

Unless they were from Death Valley, in which case, they were freezing.

We were lucky in one sense: Our hotel was air conditioned, a rarity in the town that produced Fog City Records and fog-tea. On the other hand, the a/c system was designed more to stir the air around than chill it down, so by 4:30 in the morning, our room was still considerably beyond cozy in the high 80s.

It was like sleeping in one of those trendy kitchen warming drawers.

However, even in the wee, small hours, the air outside was hotter still.

At 6:30 a.m., when the nearby Walgreen’s pharmacy-cum-variety-store opened, I dashed across the street and bought two small fans for our room.

Obviously, plans for our day of museum hopping weren’t heat-wave-friendly, not unless they wanted to use me for some exotic science experiment. “Premise: At what temperature does a human start to melt?”

In the end, we spent the day jumping on and off cable cars and trolleys, enjoying the gentle breeze of open-air travel, along with the changing scenery of gingerbread-frosted buildings and the San Franciscans who live and work in them.

People-watching in San Francisco is a true art form. The City’s residents — the real ones, not nouveau San Franciscans — don’t wear just wear clothes. They costume … even at 97 degrees.

That elderly little lady with her suit, pillbox hat and white gloves is living out her memories of social graces that have gone the way of the dodo.

The Gen-X day-trader heading for his power breakfast with the brass is equally as uniformed in his Polo shirt (the real thing by Lauren, of course), his crisp chinos, his micro-fiber messenger bag, his laptop/PDA/cell-phone and his Mephisto loafers.

The teen with purple-tinged hair, black fingernails and enough body piercings to qualify as a studded tire is wearing more fierce-looking stuff around her waist, neck and wrists than a SWAT team member. Heavy metal is her accessory, not a music style. Bumping into her would be like going 10 rounds with a forklift.

By the next morning, it had “cooled down” to a high of 92. We had an early breakfast at the Ferry Building’s farmers market, noshing our way from booth to booth. I’ll bet by noon, those beautiful fresh fruits had turned to jam and the veggies were instant ratatouille.

A ferry ride was just the ticket for our last day in The City. It was the only place to be even remotely cool.

One thing’s certain: The next time somebody tells me San Francisco’s a hot town, I’ll ask for context first, and then I’ll check to see if he’s a Death Valley native.

This column ran July 10, 2003, in The Cambrian.

Finding ancestors in unusual places

2008-06-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

We came across "The Ancestors" again recently, and seeing the antique artwork revived all the old questions. The paintings of the stern-faced man and woman have been part of our family for as long as I can remember, always stuck in somebody’s attic, basement or shed.

The assumption always has been that they’re twigs on our family tree, somehow. We just don’t know which branch.

Not knowing their names or how we’re related, I’m certainly not inclined to hang them on the wall and look at them every day. But I can’t quite bring myself to consign the pictures to the garage-sale pile, not yet.

So there The Ancestors sit, stored in dusty archives alongside Christmas ornaments, boxes of clothes I’ll never wear again and the great blender for which I can no longer find parts.

Genealogy fascinates me, especially now that the Internet links us to such marvelous archives as those compiled by the Mormon Church. But I already spend too much of each day clicking and typing on my computer.

At the end of a long work day, the last thing I want to do is spend more time at my keyboard to track relatives … even if I’d like to know the cousins, aunts and uncles I assume are out there.
Sometimes, however, they find me.

For instance, when my aunt Kate came to visit recently, she left me a book to read and keep. "In My Blood," by John Sedgwick, is billed as covering "six generations of madness and desire in an American family."

That is our family, too, Kate said, through her mother (my grandmother). Fascinating!

We apparently are among the descendents of Major Gen. Robert Sedgwick, 1613-1656. Our lineage means Kate and me could join the Ancestors of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts (founded in 1637). That makes it the oldest Hereditary Society in the U.S., according to www.hereditary.us.

Such ancestral one-upmanship matters to some people, but certainly not to Kate or me, especially since neither of us are joiners at heart. I’d rather have a relative I can hug than a plaque on my wall.

But it is nice to know our family’s been on U.S. soil for at least that long, even if they did have a whole tool-box full of loose screws, according to the book.

Of most interest to me is how many of the people John Sedgwick profiled were notable writers of their times, authoring books and contributing regularly to such periodicals as The Atlantic, GQ and Newsweek.

I’ve also discovered that the Internet can produce inadvertent genealogical treasures. Sometimes the joy just falls into your lap (otherwise known as the Inbox).

About two years ago, my cousin Lisa (on my father’s side), sent me an e-mail. "I’m checking this guy out," she wrote, "but it looks like we might have some Marsala relatives. YAY!"

The message she forwarded introduced Rosario Marsala. I have copied it verbatim. But keep in mind that Saro doesn’t speak English; his daughter translated his message before they sent it.

"I was born in Villalba (Sicily) in 1947, now I live in Catania. Our grandfathers were brothers and so our fathers were cousins. From a long time I tried to make contact with your family and finally I make it with notices in Internet. If you want to know me and your descentent better I’m disposed to exchange notices. With love to you and your family, Rosario Marsala."

For someone like me, with few blood relatives I can identify, write to and hug, that short e-mail was found treasure.

The three of us have exchanged intermittent messages since, along with wistful hopes that we can all get together someday.

In one of the more charming linguistic twists of translation, our newly found cousin often signs off his recent missives with, "Lovely, Saro."

Dear Saro, yes it would be a joy to meet you and yours. I’d love to have you teach me Italian, more about our family and Grandma Maria’s recipe for ragú.

But just knowing you’re there is such a warm fuzzy feeling, such a delight. Thank you for that.
Now, if only I knew who "The Ancestors" were.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: A liver lover's comeuppance

2008-06-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, one food that was touted as magic was … gulp … liver. It was packed with protein, iron, vitamin A, riboflavin and niacin. We were supposed to eat it once a week, assuming you could stand the sight, smell, feel and look of it.

In recent years, liver has lost its nutritional luster, so to speak, because of high levels of saturated fats and cholesterol.

It’s really satisfying to see it out of favor. Revenge is sweet, even if liver isn’t.

In my March 2, 1983, column in The Cambrian and the newspaper then known as the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune, I explained my aversion to liver. “I had an acute case of childhood anemia in the days when Geritol was only for the Social Security set. So, I ate liver. And eggs. And spinach. But mostly liver. Once a day.

"And early in the treatment, I had to eat it … raw.”

My poor mother, who felt as I do about liver, fixed it for me. “Then she had to sit there and watch me eat it — not only for moral support and friendliness, but to make sure I didn’t slip it under the table to the cat.

“Mom manufactured numerous disguises, none of which worked. Grind liver up fine and bury it in a meatloaf, and you’ve got a liver meatloaf. Put it into a turkey stuffing, and you’ll ruin a perfectly nice bird. And chopped calves liver is nothing like the classical chicken-liver spread.

“Because it will still be beef liver.

“However, I survived. And that should have been that.”

Then I married a man who, for years, adored calves liver, with or without onions. Before husband Richard’s heart surgery, he actually was eager to order it in public, when we were at a restaurant.

“Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is?” I wrote. “Being in public with someone who enjoys beef liver? I’d almost rather he'd put a lampshade on his head at parties, or sang ‘Melancholy Baby.’

So, rather than suffering the indignities of public disclosure and paying restaurant prices for the honor, I found myself cooking beef liver at home.

This, naturally, meant I had to cook another entire meal for the rest of the family, who, not being willing eat it themselves OR share their dining table with a plate of liver, ate their meals in another room.

Over the years, I developed some culinary tricks. I used tongs when cooking liver. I chomped on aromatic gum. I squinted a lot, so I could almost convince myself that I wasn’t really seeing what I was afraid I was seeing.

And I came up with a combination of flavors that made liver almost taste good. For those who like liver to begin with, I understand the mixture is ambrosial.

“I’ll take their word for it,” I wrote.
And, for other liver haters, the combination is magical with boneless chicken breasts, pounded out a bit to make them an even thickness.

The recipe included crisp bacon (also verboten now, sob, wail) and sauteed mushrooms, onions and garlic.

I salted, peppered and sprinkled the liver with nutmeg, paprika and thyme, then seared it on one side until it started to brown. Almost immediately after I flipped it, I poured over it a blend of teriyaki sauce and cream sherry, which simmered away until the liver was done to taste (not mine, Charlie!). I then reduced the sauce and stirred in some sour cream and a sprinkle of fresh nutmeg.

As I wrote at the end of the recipe, “Serve quickly. The only thing worse than hot cooked beef liver is cold cooked beef liver.”

Or raw liver.

But the column had a sequel.

We were in the bakery-and-catering business then, and a few weeks after the column was published, we prepared and served an oh-so-chic housewarming-party meal near the country-club golf course in San Luis Obispo.

The men clustered around husband Richard at the bar, and the women gathered around me at the appetizer station.

We chatted away, and soon they realized I was a Trib columnist. The women buzzed with excitement (and the results of a few margaritas), asking questions and advice.

Suddenly, one woman popped up out of the huddle, pointed her finger at Richard and said, loudly and accusingly, “And you’re the damn liver lover!”

Not any more, ma’am. And for that, I thank his cardiologist, nutritionist, the dawn of common sense and improving taste buds.

Seize the moment

2008-06-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was logging my miles on a walk when I saw her, a slight, young girl sitting there on the rock at the beach. Her head was down, her hands were in her lap and her shoulders were hunched over a bit. Her long blond hair flowed over them and riffled in the breeze.

Her back was to me, but from my vantage point, she didn’t seem to be moving, even though other children nearby were running and playing in the sand. Other nearby adults, parents perhaps, glanced over at her occasionally but didn’t seem worried.

I stood and watched. Maybe five minutes passed. As far as I could tell, she still hadn’t looked up, wiggled, twisted or moved at all. Finally, I began to walk toward her to make sure she was all right. As I circled around to get a better head-on view, I saw what she had been doing for all that time.

She was looking at a shell … turning it over and over in her hand, running her fingers along the ridges and swirls. She was smiling with sparkling eyes. The child clearly was entranced. Relieved that she was OK, I continued my walk but kept the little girl’s wonder and joy in my mind.

And then someone turned on the memory light bulb over my head.

In another era, that little girl on the rock was me. That’s why the vision of her had captivated me so: I’d repeatedly done the same thing when I was her age, spending long chunks of time studying a treasured shell from along the Atlantic-Ocean shore.

Back in the present, I envied both little girls for their ability to single-track focus, for their unquestioning sense of wonder and magic … and for the spare time they had for studying those shells. I so wanted all that back.

How long had it been since I was that completely engrossed in and thrilled by something so simple yet so complex? Since I’d taken the time to really, truly appreciate the wonders of the world?

Too long.

We live at the edge of the sea, but do we really see it any more, or is it just a majestically moving-mural backdrop to our lives?

We live at the midst of a rare, historic forest, but how long has it been since any of us big people have really studied one of its pines or oaks, a cone or a root and felt the power of its ages?

Looking back toward my long-gone child again, I remembered lying on the ground, looking up through a tree’s branches to the blue sky and dreaming … probably for hours. Is that child gone forever?

These days, when we see the deer, the otters, the pelicans, we smile and feel false pride in our wisdom, because we’re smart enough to live here. But do we stop and really watch as a casually strolling doe stands stock still and stares back, cockily confident that we’re merely a minor irritant in the grand scheme of things?

How many weeks (months, years) has it been since we’ve sat on the pier at San Simeon? Or driven to Morro Bay and taken time along the way to park, sit on the car hood and absorb the beauty of the sweep of beach down to the rock? Or stopped on the way to Templeton to admire the twists and curves of an ancient oak tree?

There’s so much that we busy-busy adults see but don’t observe and appreciate. We drive through Cambria’s streets, but do we pause to enjoy the quirky diversity of the homes’ architecture and settings? To wonder, “Just who are those people who live in there?”

We dash downtown to grab a quart of milk or a prescription, but don’t take time to appreciate Cambria’s unique blend of charm and idiosyncrasy. How long since we walked through a mission, Hearst Castle or a museum … hiked through a forest, jogged down a shoreline or strolled along a meadow path?

Much too long.

So, see ya, folks. It’s past time. I’ve got a play date with Mother Nature.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Fry attack

2008-05-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Most of us at least make a stab or two at trying to eat correctly, doing our low-cal, low-fat, high-exercise penance for past indiscretions. But sometimes, after an angelic breakfast of orange juice and cereal with fat-free milk or yogurt, I’ll get a major munchie attack about half-past lunch.

That’s especially true if I’m driving past JJ’s or the grill, and catch a whiff of crisp, hot French fries, right out of the fryer. Yes, I know they’re empty calories, coronary arrest lurking in a greasy little white paper bag. But that aroma can be so seductive that some days, it’s almost impossible to drive past the parking area.

When I’m really hungry and know I’ll be heading past those seductive scents, I’ve even tried distracting myself with peppermint lotion under my nostrils. Trust me: peppermint-laced fried potatoes will never challenge deep-fried Twinkies, which also sound like a culinary nightmare.

Recently, I gave in to the siren of the fryer, deluding myself with the thought that I’d avoided a French-fry binge for weeks. And, according to Julia Child (not to mention various dietary behavior-modification gurus), if you really, really want to eat something, you’re supposed to go ahead and eat it, in moderation.

“Don’t try to eat on the cheap,” they say, or you’ll wind up eating everything in sight to compensate for what you really want. It’s like a “Cathy” cartoon from hell, come to life.

You know what I mean. When you’re really craving a Linn’s éclair, Sugar-Free Jell-O just won’t do. Fat-free yogurt’s good, but it’s not a French Corner Bakery tart or one of Caren’s Corner’s sundaes. Celery’s a joke unless it’s filled with cream cheese or peanut butter, or sautéed in butter with onions for a rich turkey stuffing. And rice cakes make good building blocks for a tiny granddaughter. But lunch?

So there I was, decadence personified, searing my hands by snatching the first few blazing-hot fries out of the bag.

I dug around in the bag for the catsup packets, each the size of two plump, side-by-side stamps and holding a tablespoon or so of the spicy condiment. Aha! Found ‘em.

The trick is getting the catsup out of a packet.

“Tear here,” said the tiny printing near the ridged top edge of the packet.

Sure.

I squeezed my grease-slicked right thumb and forefinger together at the “tear here” mark on the catsup packet. But the minute I tried to pull the other edge with my left hand, my right hand would lose its grip.

It was like trying to hold onto a raw egg white with your fingers spread apart, pry the pit out of an extra-ripe avocado, or grab a wary, soapy 2-year old out of the bathtub.

There in the middle of the sidewalk, my options were few. Those packets are made from well-disguised chain mail. I had no scissors in my pocket, no Swiss Army knife in the glove compartment.

Bite it open? Don't think so. I already pay my dentist far too much money to try that maneuver.

I had this vivid vision of having a catsup temper tantrum, putting the packet on the pavement and stomping up and down on it. But just think of the mess I’d have made and, what’s worse, there wouldn’t have been any catsup left.

By now, I was back at the office, and my fries were cold. Yuk. Cold fries rank right up there with chilled Cream of Wheat, or a warm Dove bar. So I threw the whole mess away, and stalked off in a hungry huff.

Later, I figured it out. The Zone Diet and Weight Watchers conspired to invent the catsup packet. It’s cut-proof, tear-proof and meal-proof … on purpose. It’s behavior modification, whether you want it or not.

I’d say thank you to them for their diet assistance, but I really, really wanted those fries.

Next time? I’ve got it all figured out. I’ll just take along my own little bottle of catsup. Have Heinz, will travel.

This column ran May 1, 2003, in The Cambrian.

Bra-bbling about underwear

2008-05-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

I say "grrrrrr" to anonymous writers, people who don't put their names on comments, letters or articles they post on the Internet.

If you've got something to say, by golly, then sign it. Take responsibility. Be proud of what you've written, so we know who to applaud or boo, depending on your stance and ours.

It's all there on the Net--somewhere -- politics, recipes, philosophy and, by the way, here's how my neighbor looks when he's half-dressed, half-smashed and half-witted.

And there are opinions on everything.

For instance, many aggrieved women have griped in print or online about that female-torture device known as a bra.

Fashion says there's no choice: We either strap ourselves into bindings to elevate our glands, sharpen their profiles and keep them steady, or we flip, flop and try not to catch our droop-boobs in the zippers of our jeans.

Bras are especially difficult after a certain age: As someone named Val wrote on a blog, "I used to wear a 34D...now I wear a 36 long."

Some of the "bra-articles" surfaced first in newspapers or magazines, then migrated to the Internet, often because someone read the writing, liked it and wanted to share it with someone else.

For instance, Belinda Luscombe wrote an open letter, "Warren Buffet, Adjust My Bra," which ran in Time magazine Nov. 12 (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680142,00.html). Buffet owns underwear firms Fruit of the Loom and Vanity Fair (among many others), and Luscombe begged him to bring brassiere design into the 21st century.

I especially loved her tale of Herminie Cadolle, whom Luscombe said invented the bra strap about 120 years ago because "it made more sense for women's breasts to be suspended from above than cantilevered from beneath. So, instead of walking around wearing the lingerie equivalent of the London Bridge, women could slide themselves into a Golden Gate. This was a huge relief -- as anyone who has worn a strapless bra can tell you -- because the London Bridge pretty much always falls down."

Earlier that month, 52-year-old Lee Jackson of Auckland, New Zealand, responded online to the San Francisco Chronicle's "great bra debate" in the editorial pages.

Jackson said she wants to shoot the inventor who developed "an underwire to shove your boobs together for 'cleavage.'" If that inventor was a man, she said, he should have "paper clips wrapped around his testicles" and the clips "fastened to the waist of his BVDs with rubber bands."

Jackson wrote that she's tired of:
* "bras that fit wonderfully until I actually sit down, bend over, twist around or reach up for something";
* "so-called sports bras that make me wonder just what 'sport' they were designed for"; and
* "walking into a lingerie shop and having prepubescent, anorexic twigs advise me I might have better luck finding something that 'fits me' in the geriatric section of a department store."

Well done, Lee.

But we can't thank the woman who wrote of preparing for her high-school reunion with a quick diet and some fashion tricks ... none of which worked.

She battled with a slinky dress, body prep and makeup ("all-day, face-lifting, gravity-fighting moisturizer with wrinkle-filler spackle").

Then came a "black lace, tummy-tucking, cellulite-pushing, ham-hock-rounding" girdle and the matching "'lifting-those-bosoms-like-they're-filled-with-helium' bra."

The contortionist writer "pulled, stretched, tugged, hiked, folded, tucked, twisted, shimmied, hopped, pushed, wiggled, snapped, shook, caterpillar-crawled and kicked" her way into the girdle, then tackled the bra.

The saleslady had told her, "Put the bra on the way it should be worn -- straps over the shoulders. Then bend over and gently place both breasts inside the cups."

The writer groused that "the boobs weren't cooperating." After testing various techniques, she tried rocking back and forth to get her bosoms swinging. "Finally, on the fourth swing, pause and lift, I captured the gliding glands" and fastened the bra.

"Yes, Houston, we have lift up!"

She wrote, "My breasts were high, firm, and there was cleavage! I was happy ...until I tried to look down. I had a chin rest. And I couldn't see my feet."

She never did get to the reunion.

How I'd love to send her a fan letter, if I only knew who she was.

BEST OF: Popping-hot thoughts

2008-05-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, my mind is like a popcorn kernel in a hot frying pan, jumping from place to place, but never really getting anywhere. That’s especially true when insomnia strikes. All I really want is an “off” button for my brain, so I can get some sleep.

In the middle of one recent night, I started mulling over some things I’ve learned in my life and how I’d define them.

For instance, I’ve learned that:

• If a jacket or dress in a shop window or ad makes the size 2 model wearing it look like a prime candidate for Weight Watchers, no amount of dreaming, wishing or squinting up my eyes will make the fashions look good on my generously proportioned body.

The phrase “high-style human Hummer” comes to mind.

• Running a vacuum cleaner over the same spot at least six times before I bend down to pick up whatever it is the vacuum isn’t catching is a waste of my time and electricity, and I feel profoundly foolish if somebody else sees me doing it.

Work order: “If you can’t suck it up, pick it up.”

• Cutting your nails over a shag rug will come back to haunt you.

Mantra: “Stepping on a rug of nails is no more comfortable than sleeping on a bed of them.”

• Buying a self-help book or listening to a do-it-yourself program doesn’t get the job done. If I want the results, I have to do the exercise, clean the refrigerator’s compressor, dig up the tulip bulbs or study Italian.

The title “’something for dummies’ means the dummy has to do the work herself.

• Once cupboards, closets and shelves are full, such pleasant occupations as window shopping, retail Web surfing, catalog-page flipping and going to garage sales can cause conflicts.

Having one mixing bowl is good. Two bowls can get me through a party. Having five identical bowls means I’ll never be able to get any of them into or out of the cupboard without a fight, and may not be able to close the cupboard door.

The dual phrases “Visa bill” and “But where are we going to put it, honey?” come to mind.

• Hunches are good things. Years ago, when county workers installed an all-way stop sign at Burton and Ardath drives, the concept made me nervous. It seemed to me then that having 99 percent of drivers stop at the busy intersection would make the remaining 1 percent is even more dangerous, because nobody would expect those drivers wouldn’t stop.

In a close call, I was nearly the statistic that proved my hunch.

I had stopped at the stop sign, ready to turn right on Ardath on my way home. As I began to turn the wheel and step on the gas, two commercial trucks came over the Ardath rise to the south.

A little voice in the back of my head said, “Those blankety-blanks aren’t going to stop.”

The big, heavy delivery truck, loaded with sheet rock and pulling a trailer loaded with an industrial forklift, sped through the intersection without a hint of stopping or even pausing. A second, smaller delivery truck followed behind.

If I’d made the turn, just because it was my turn and my right to do so, I’d be dead.

That first truck would have hit me right at the driver’s seat, and the second truck would have ploughed into the back of the first truck.

I recall a statement at the end of a public service message: “You may be in the right. Dead right.”

Now, if my mind would just quit popping so I could get some sleep, maybe I wouldn’t have such bizarre thoughts.

This column first ran in The Cambrian on April 3, 2003.

Follow the money

2008-05-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

“You think there’s no good left in this world,” Mary Woeste of Cambria said. “You listen to the news and ask yourself, ‘Can it get any worse?’ And then something like this happens.”

Mary, a warmly caring woman eternally on the go, is a caregiver for seniors. She has more to do than time to do it.

I’ve known Mary for about a quarter century. Her brother and uncle, Keith Woeste and Pat Wade, were best pals with our sons Brian and Sean.

About a month ago, after a long shift, Mary was rushing to the post office to buy a money order, carrying cash in an envelope, five $100 bills saved up from Christmas and birthday gifts.

“I must have picked up the envelope upside down,” she surmised. As the money fluttered away, full-speed-ahead Mary was probably already a half-block away. She didn’t notice until, at the post office, she reached inside the now-empty envelope.

She went looking for the cash, but didn’t find it.

“I said to myself, ‘OK, it’s gone. I just hope the person who picked it up needed it worse than I do.’”

However, Henry Rodriguez, on his lunch break from Antiques on Main, had spotted two $100 bills. He thought, “It can’t be real. It must be play money. But then I saw someone else picking up paper in front of the drug store.”

Steve Johnson of Bend, Ore., had found the other $300 and was walking toward Henry. Once they figured out that the money didn’t belong to either of them, Henry gave his two bills to Steve and went to lunch.

Steve was puzzled. How to find the owner? He did what any smart guy would do — he consulted his parents, Loren and Jeanette Johnson of Cambria, telling them, “It was raining $100 bills downtown! I’ve just found $500, and I don’t know how to find out who it belongs to.”

He decided to check at the drug store.

Bingo! This is a small town. Chances are good that if you’re looking for somebody, somebody else you know will know that somebody.

Cambria Village Pharmacy clerk Mandy Ervin, recalls, “A man came in and asked Kris Morris and me if someone had lost some money. We said ‘yes, five $100 bills.’ He pulled them out of his wallet.”

Then he left, but the man who’d had a fistful of dollars wouldn’t be a man with no name for long.

Sue Patchen and Kay Ash were unloading their van in front of the antique mall. Henry came back to work. “I found $200, but we don’t know who it belongs to,” he told coworkers, including Debborah Patchen.

She told her mom and Kay, and they said they’d seen a distraught Mary going from store to store in East Village, asking if anyone had seen her $500.

Debborah called Anne Winburn, owner of St. Mary Mead, a shop across the street. By the time they called Mary, she already knew her money had been found. You see, the drug store clerks also knew Mary, and the pharmacist knew how to reach her.

Mary remembers, “The girl at the pharmacy called me and said, ‘I’m in tears. You won’t believe what just happened.’”

An amazed, grateful Mary “went right down, got the money and went straight to the post office.” But she was dismayed to not know who her Good Samaritan was.

That didn’t last long. Soon, Mary tracked down Good Guy Henry, just a couple doors down the block.

Mary didn’t need CSI Cambria to figure out the rest, because —surprise, surprise — it turns out Henry had known Steve when the Bend resident owned a store in San Simeon.

Mary called Steve’s mom, Jeanette Johnson. Jeanette asked, “How did you find out so fast?”

This is Cambria, Jeanette.

Mary wanted to send a “thank-you” gift. Jeanette checked with her son, then told Mary he wouldn’t take anything, “but you can send him a card.”

Mary said that, on the card, she told Steve that the next time he comes to town, “at least I hope he’ll let me treat him and his family to dinner … What a guy. I’m forever in his debt … and so is my American Express card.”

BEST OF: Not-so-Iron-Chefs' ice-cream duel

2008-04-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

When neighbors get together in Cambria, it’s often to share a meal.

We and two sets of our Marine Terrace neighbors added a twist to that equation, sharing a holiday weekend night as we made up quarts and quarts of homemade vanilla ice cream in a duel to determine who has the best ice-cream making machine.

The official competitors and their choice of weaponry were:

• Richard Greek, (then the county’s personnel director and former ag commissioner), with a wood-bucket, hand-crank, uses-salt-and-ice model ice-cream maker;

• Superior Court Judge Martin Tangeman, with an electrified version of the Greeks’ machine; and

• Richard Tanner, retired baker-caterer and former pit boss for Harrah’s Club, Reno, with a self-contained, no-salt/no-ice, commercial-style electric ice-cream freezer.

The Greeks paid close to retail for their model. We got our machine on super sale/closeout/slight scratches/discontinued model and they couldn’t even find the original box. And the Tangemans got their ice-cream maker at a rummage sale for $5.

Serious competition? Of course not. Hilarious? You bet. Competitive? Oh, definitely. We’re talking some major A-type personalities here, and each was devoutly convinced that his machine was the best on the block, literally.

We all live within a few houses of each other, even one of our official judges Joan Wedbush, who doesn’t have an ice-cream machine, but is a former caterer.

That Sunday proved to be ideal in every way but one: the weather, which was cold, foggy and London-like. Not exactly ideal ice-cream weather, but I guess ice cream is a hit in any environment.

While the idea was strictly for fun, we did have to do things correctly, we agreed. To make sure nobody hyped their own mix to make it special, we made up a giant batch of rich vanilla ice cream, and ladled it into the side-by-side containers right before the machines started their magic.

There were the three contestants, three judges and eight ice-cream groupies in the bunch, ranging in age from 3 to 76. The “duel” was a hoot. Good fun and dessert were the only real goals. We all laughed so hard, our sides and cheeks hurt.

Marty made a big play of stretching his arms behind his head and saying over and over, “See how hard I’m working, checking the ice cream,” while Richard, Christine and son Kris Greek took turns churning the crank on their low-tech device.

Marty made sure he or his wife, Carol Tangeman, stood guard at all times over their machine, to protect against insidious industrial espionage, I suppose.

The Greeks kept needling Marty, noting the noise factor from the Tangemans’ machine. “It’s so loud. You’re drowning out the ocean,” Richard Greek said. “And what if the power goes out?”

“You should have solar panels just for this,” Marty countered to my husband.

In turn, my Richard raised his hands above his head, looked up into the dense, drippy fog and said, “And just what good what that do you? Or us … remember, our machine is electric, too.”

When challenged over his demand for a handicap because he’d been “forced” to use the Greeks’ salt and ice, Judge Tangeman said he’d review the legal precedents … until one of us asked if there’d be any ice cream left by the time he’d get around to handing down his ruling.

This went on all night long.

We’d set up a wine-style blind tasting, complete with official judging forms and palate-cleansing glasses of water. And were those judges meticulous! “All contestants clear the area,” said Wedbush. “Let’s not have any undue pressure.”

The judges studiously nibbled and sipped, rolled the ice creams around on their tongues and slowly filled in their judging forms — much to the consternation of the youngsters waiting to dig into the leftovers.

Then we all sampled the three ice creams, eventually adding fresh strawberries or blueberries, caramel sauce or my Richard’s truffle topper, nuts, M&Ms or sprinkles. In some of the kids’ dishes, it was hard to find the ice cream among the add-ons. Memories of ice-cream-parlor “suicide sundaes” come to mind.

There were distinct differences between the three ice creams. One was soft and smooth, another slightly grainy and homemade style, another firm, icy-cold and silky.

Who won?

The Tanner’s commercial machine took the honors, I think partially because the self-refrigeration unit got the mixture so cold, so fast.

Finally, the sated contestants and judges staggered home, grateful to the end that neighbors could enjoy such a fierce competition, and each other, so much.

Summer’s coming. Anyone for a rematch?

This column ran first in The Cambrian on September 19, 2002.

Dye-hard egg hunt

2008-04-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Before I became a grandmother, I never knew it would be so much fun — or so complicated.

For instance, we hosted a houseful for Easter: granddaughters Caitlyn (12), Alyssa (9), Isabelle (8) and Georgia (5), plus our son Sean and his fiancée, Kim. What resulted was this family’s longest-ever Easter egg hunt.

The girls are each so different! And there were some special circumstances to consider: one girl is severely allergic to most nuts; another is fairly fussy about which candies she likes (such as peanut-butter cups); and a third was on crutches, with her leg in a cast after a sledding accident.

The fourth is 5.

So this hunt required some MBA-level pre-planning.

The holiday event began as soon as the girls awoke, with a nervous Easter Bunny (EB) fervently hoping the preparations would produce frolic and fun, but without any youthful hurt feelings, tears or temper tantrums.

At the dining table, each place was set with an egg-shaped place mat, a bunny mug, an Easter candy and a couple of little gifts to keep the girls occupied during breakfast. Meanwhile, EB snuck out, put four filled baskets on the front porch and hid 28 boiled hens’ eggs the girls had colored the day before.

Once the adults were up (if not yet Easter outfitted or even totally awake), the chant began. “Egg hunt! Egg hunt!”

When the girls opened the front door, the squeals began. Baskets! Candy! Trinkets! Chocolate bunnies (three of them filled with peanut cream and delightfully named “Reester Bunnies,” and one nut-free Cadbury)! The giggling gaggle of girls deposited their loot on the dining table, then dashed out the door in search of eggs.

“Halt! Wait!” EB said with nose twitching. “Rule time. There are seven eggs out there for each of you. Caitlyn and Isabelle — once you’ve found seven each, then go help Georgia and Alyssa,” who was limping around on crutches.

Caity and Izzy were done in a flash, of course, but they amiably played “you’re getting warmer … colder” with the other two girls as a couple of adults trailed along to make sure Georgia didn’t wind up stranded in a tree and Lyssie didn’t fall over trying to dig an egg out of a flower pot.

Meanwhile, EB and her two cohorts were inside the house, hiding candy-filled plastic eggs and other goodies.

Once the girls had found all the real eggs outside, the hunt was on in the living room, dining room and halls. It was like having four caffeine-amped monkeys playing “I spy” throughout the house, peering into vases, under couch cushions and behind pillows.

(I so hope they got it all. I remember my grandmother finding an overlooked chocolate egg in August one year — behind the radiator on a white rug that wasn’t white any more.)

Once our girls had ferreted out the goodies, the “Easter Banker” took over.

With a reserve of each kind of candy in another basket, the Easter Banker could exchange candies for another kind. That way, the fussy eater and the nut-allergic could redeem treats they’d found but couldn’t or wouldn’t eat. The other girls could exchange, too, if they wanted to.

Were we done yet? Not a chance.

After Easter Banker negotiations finished, the girls whooped and headed outside again.

Soon they were back, announcing that the adult Easter Egg Hunt was about to begin. They’d re-hidden the colored eggs, and now the parents and grandparents were to find them.

Devious? I ask you, how was I to know they’d hidden an egg under an upside-down abalone shell?

With a little coaching and a lot of hilarity, hooting and hollering from the youthful gallery, we oldsters finally found all the eggs (which by then were destined for the garbage rather than a deviled-egg tray or egg-salad sandwiches).

Whew! The hunt was over. We’d pulled it off. We’d made memories — and a huge, so-funny mess. A month later, in the most unlikely places, we’re still finding biliously pink and purple strands of Easter grass.

Could the Easter Bunny finally relax? Of course not. She’s already planning the 2009 hunt, playing “Can you top this?”

BEST OF: Tour de chance

2008-04-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Imagine joining a group of strangers traipsing around on a shared vacation, seeing sights, having adventures, being taught new things.

Imagine us running rapidly in the other direction.

It’s called a tour, and for decades, we’ve avoided them like the plague. I'd protest that we’re too self-reliant, too stubbornly autonomous. We like to go our own way, make our own decisions, do our own thing at our own time.

On a tour, most of those choices are premade for you, about your room, your schedule, your activities, your menu and even the people with whom you sit and dine.

“Go, go,” our friends had told us. “Trust us. You’ll have a wonderful time.”

Finally, feisty as I am, I had to admit there was a lure in having somebody else making the decisions once in a while. I was willing to give up my tour-director hat, just for a little while. So, recently, we gave in and dipped our travel toes into the world of shared vacations.

Now as newbies, we weren't brave enough to sign up for a two-week group jaunt to Zimbabwe. We started small, with a close-to-home tour that began on a Sunday night and ended on a Tuesday morning.

Know what? We really did enjoy it. But we did our homework before we went, and that helped a lot.

Here are some things we did pre-tour, and one I shouldn’t have:

· We made sure that we were staying in a hotel we’d have chosen on our own. After you arrive is not the time to discover your hotel is a flea-trap in a red-light district. Fortunately, ours wasn’t.

· Ask dumb-sounding questions, such as “Do you have good water pressure there?” Why ask that, especially at a small hotel? Because on tour, everybody’s on the same schedule, which means most of them will hit the showers at the same time. It’s a bummer to bathe at 6 a.m. with cold water coming out of the showerhead drop by drop.

· Make sure the schedule matches yours. If you sleep till 10 every morning, and the group breakfast is served at 7, you’re going to be miserable.

· The itinerary also should allow you some down time. We had three walking tours in a row, one at 9 a.m., one at 10:30 a.m. and another after lunch. But we had a long sit-down meal, and time to rest before the beach barbecue that night. Even so, our tootsies would have appreciated a longer break.

· Conversely, if you have the chance, switch between types of activities. If you’re sitting on your duff being lectured in the morning, then go for a kayak tour or ping-pong competition in the afternoon. Otherwise, your scheduled evening stroll on the boardwalk may turn into a hobble.

· Make sure the prices you’re paying are, indeed, less than you’d pay if you were setting up the same activities on your own.

· Probably, you’ll be barraged with food. If you’re lucky, as we were, it will be marvelous. But it’s still different than your normal fare. So go easy. Don’t take that third skewer of shrimp or second piece of pie, even if it is included in the cost. Your tummy will thank you.

· And, for heaven’s sake, don’t do as I did and change purses right before the trip. It was plumb mortifying to hold up the line as I rummaged around for my pass in the 17 pockets that purse had suddenly sprouted. I must have looked like an aging bimbo as I smiled (aka grimaced) and apologized over and over.

So, go, go. Enjoy some group travel. If you plan ahead, it can work out to be more fun than you’d have had alone or as a couple. Trust us.

This column ran Sept. 18, 2003 in The Cambrian. And while we've only taken one other shared tour since then, we remain impressed with the concept.

Finding lost memory, digital style

2008-04-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

I admit it — I’m a loser.

Not in the sense of not being good at my job or my life. I think I’m a good person. I’m also proud of being a community reporter and think I do it well … although I’ll never be in the same financial league as Oprah, J.K. Rowling or Rachael Ray, fersure.

I’m a loser because I lose things.

My car-key misplacing abilities are legendary. I’ll misfile crucial sheets of notes. I’ve put the portable phone in the freezer and the clean pillowcases by the phone stand. Fortunately, I didn’t put the ice cream in the linen closet. No, I left it sitting on the counter.

Just imagine the trouble my digital camera could give me.

Not the camera, itself, at least not yet. But have you taken a good look at the “film” for digital photography?

If I can lose a 5,000-pound mini-van in the parking lot or a 200-pound husband in our very own home, just imagine how fast I can mislay a miniscule digital-media disk.

I take some vitamins that are bigger than that!

Of course I never lose the old, slow, worn-out cards, oh no. It’s always the brand new, expensive, faster-than-the-speed-of-light disks that disappear.

It’s worst when I lose a card that I’ve just filled with photos during a crucial, never-to-be-repeated event.

On deadline.

To say that my bosses wouldn’t be very happy when that happens would be an understatement, like declaring that Mt. Everest is a sizeable hill.

And then there was a recent parade at Cambria's annual Pinedorado festival.

I’d taken with me a little case that holds backup AA batteries and a couple of spare photo cards. Digital media and pockets don’t get along, so I always have the case with me because it snaps right around my camera strap.

During the parade, I dashed up and down the street, taking pictures of floats and bands, little kids and clowns, just like I always do.

I think I log more miles than the marchers.

There were frustrations, too.

My Stetson flew off, and almost got crushed by a Clydesdale.

I missed some great shots because so many parade-watchers weren’t staying put, but were instead walking around, right in front of my lens. And I’m not tall enough to shoot over their heads.

I kept myself together, though, even when someone reached over and slapped a sticker-badge on my fringed, Western jacket and I couldn’t peel it off the suede.

Then I lost it. First the little case and the digital cards inside ... and then my cool, in part because there were wonderful parade pictures on one of those disks, I just knew it.

Husband Richard and I looked everywhere, obvious or not. We searched our van, gutters, trash cans. We asked everybody within a mile. We left “please call” notes all over town.

Eventually, photos from the other disks were used. Husband Richard ordered some expensive new digital cards. And I sulked.

But recently, I got around to taking my Western jacket to the dry cleaners so they could remove the stick-um from that doggone badge.

Did you know it costs more to clean that suede jacket than it would to replace it? Absurd.

As I flung the jacket back on the car seat in disgust, something thunked my knee. I reached into the pocket, rummaged around and surprise! I found the little case with the digital cards in it!

Sometime during the parade, I must have taken the case off my camera strap and stuck it in the fabric pocket of my jacket … not knowing that the pocket had a well-camouflaged hole in it.

As I scurried about taking photos, the lightweight little case must have slid down between the suede and the lining, ending up near the jacket’s already-bulky bottom hem.

Of course, I had checked the pockets way back when. But not the hem!

I suppose if I were more prone to wearing a fringed suede jacket around the house, I might have found the case and those three expensive photo cards much sooner.

But even months later, let me tell you, it’s a whole lot nicer to be a finder than a loser. I admit it.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribune news.com.

BEST OF: We don't fight. Really.

2008-03-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

When Husband Richard and I owned the bakery, lo all those years ago, another husband-and-wife team who worked with us asked a question. The two, who had spent years in the bakery industry, clearly were embarrassed to ask.

"You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but we're curious," they said. "When do you fight? We've never worked with a husband-and-wife team who didn't rip into each other every so often. We never see you fight or argue."

Husband Richard, replied, "We don't. We don't have time to fight."

And that's true in more ways than the obvious.

He and I were in our middle-age years when we married, old enough to sense that the clock was ticking, even then. The gut-level knowledge that time's passing quickly puts a different light on a relationship, the realization that we don't have forever to spend together, so we'd much rather enjoy what we've got.

We do, and we have, for more than three decades now. It sounds like a lot of years, but it's not long enough when you're married to the right spouse.

That statistic puts us in the minority, for sure, which is sad.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, a new marriage has a 43 percent chance of ending in divorce. I've been there, too, and it's a miserable place to be.

But for the last 30 years or so, Husband Richard and I have been sharing love and laughter, children and grandchildren, smiles and tears, good days and bad breaks, hospital stays and vacations.

We've worked side-by-side in a half-dozen business ventures, shared fire and flood, survived various serious surgeries, dealt with births and deaths, built a house under duress, and vacationed in a motorhome with my mother, two teenage boys and six tiny poodles.

Is our marriage always easy, passionate and exciting? Yes and no.

First, define for me "exciting."

If exciting is jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, keeping a python in the bathroom, running for political office or safari-ing in dusty, bug-laden air so thick you could polish it like a piece of lapis, the answer is no. Emphatically.

If exciting can include dashing off to take photos of a breaking story or a special event, being among the first to learn the latest on something that interests us, standing together arm-in-arm to watch the ocean at sunset, seeing caribou plod across the tundra, giggling as we try to find a cab in the rain on Market Street, playing with grandchildren ... then definitely, yes.

Husband Richard and I are both adaptable to a point (but if I'm honest, I'll admit he's more flexible than I am).

And we don't like to argue, so we don't do it.

Really, we don't. We may discuss our differences, but it's never with anger or by disparaging each other. Disagree, sure. But never battle over why I bought those socks or why he forgets to put them in the hamper. We don't arm-wrestle for custody of the TV remote, and we never argue over where to put the sofa or where we're going for the day.

When we've hurt each other's feelings, it's been entirely accidental. We both know that, and it's an important point to remember.

A long relationship brings with it the knowledge of the time already invested. Whenever we disagree, each of us remembers to ask ourselves, "Is this an important enough argument to risk ruining this relationship?"

The answer always has been "no."

As an e-mail I got a while back pointed out, no matter how long you live, you've only got a certain amount of time to spend together, whether on exciting and romantic vacations or chopping veggies for a salad, reading the paper over the cereal bowl at the breakfast table, or waiting at the doctor's office.

Each moment is a treasure, if you let it be.

Count 'em up. Calculate your probable lifespan. Figure out the number of weekends you've got to spend together. Not many, is it?

No matter how young you are now.

If you could know now how little time there really is, wouldn't you spend as much of it as possible doing the things you really want to do together, even if it's just cuddling on the couch instead of mucking out the junk drawer or watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?

Do you really want to spend all that weekend time cleaning the garage, doing chores, shopping for things when you could be making memories together?

Or even worse, given the finite amount of time you've got, do you really want to spend any of it kvetching about something so minor you won't even remember it in a week or a month?

When you think about it, the same thing holds true for many relationships — with other family members, with friends, with co-workers and associates. It should even be true for people embroiled in Cambria's legendary political differences of opinion.

Think about it. Do you want to argue, or do you want to solve the problem?

At least at the Tanner household, life's too short to sweat the small stuff. Trust me: Having fun sure beats fighting over who has custody of the damnable remote.

This column ran first in The Cambrian on May 15, 2003.

Accidental volunteers

2008-03-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

The Proctor Lane alleyway was blocked, so the delivery driver couldn’t get his truck where it needed to be, when it needed to be there. The traffic clog could have produced a nasty confrontation.

We regularly read about tragic results from similarly simple but irritating situations, especially in metropolitan areas.

Think road rage.

However, this was Cambria on a beautiful Saturday, March 8, and good-natured North Coast kindness was about to trump tight schedules, testosterone and anger.

Someone was about to become an accidental volunteer.

Mike Rice, landscape wizard for the Cambria Historical Society’s restoration of the Guthrie-Bianchini House and garden, had parked his overloaded truck on Proctor Lane (the alley between the house and the backs of businesses facing Main Street, including Soto’s Market).

Rice, Jack and Jeanette Breglio and other volunteers began unloading thousands of used bricks donated by Ecotones Landscaping from Rice’s truck bed, bricks that soon will become part of the house's garden.

Then Ed Esquivel from Glass Farm Organic Citrus Fruits, on his way to make a delivery to Soto’s, pulled his truck into the alley.

The brick-filled truck was in his way.

Sure, he could have parked elsewhere (if he could find a spot) and carried the fruit further. Or, he could have ranted, raved, stomped, yelled, cursed or worse. Much worse.

Instead, Jack Breglio said, the kind-hearted Esquivel “got out of his truck, put on his gloves and proceeded to help us” unload all the bricks.

The story gets even nicer: Esquivel “went back to his truck and brought us a sack of his organic oranges” for an after-the-unloading snack, Breglio said, and then, “best of all, he offered to be on our volunteer list!”

Fortunately, that heartwarming story of serendipity and kindness isn’t an unusual one in the warm, fuzzy world of North Coast nonprofit agencies.

For instance, according to Ann Grossman of Friends of the Elephant Seal, part-time Cambria resident Geoff West is “our angel” and another accidental volunteer.

After stopping to see the seals one day, West, who lives in Costa Mesa, fell in love with the massive mammals. He took docent training and became the group’s only “honorary docent,” complete with his official blue FES jacket, even though he doesn’t fill shifts on the bluffs.

West regularly contributes time, money and his significant knowledge. He also “donates money and gifts … and always attends our fundraisers” and other events. Grossman said, “We were truly fortunate when Geoff found us.”

Want more?

Some time ago, a young New York couple was hiking the full length of California. Brock Carter, county parks worker from Cambria, found Matt and Sarah Buchwalder camping in the willows near a local park.
Carter called Chris Cameron, director of Camp Ocean Pines, to “see if I would put them up for a couple of nights. I did.”

The couple wound up staying at the camp for a couple of months, in exchange for painting cabin interiors and other tasks, and the director later hired the two college grads as naturalists for a season.

The camp is the frequent recipient of such unplanned, fortuitous instances, Cameron said. “‘Accidental volunteers’ is how Camp Ocean Pines runs!”

He said Bill and Jean Carter of Cambria found the camp and later, “he made every cabinet and bunk-bed, and she sewed all the curtains in the cabins.”

The late Bobbie Monroe of Cambria attended a string concert at the camp’s amphitheater and soon thereafter gave a large donation toward rebuilding the facility.

Cameron also recalls when a “couple came with their church for a weekend,” but then asked if they could return as volunteers. The husband was a skilled woodworker, so the camp director showed him an Adirondack chair and “a pile of wood we had left over from milling our winter-felled trees.”

The man then built 20 chairs for the camp.

I’m sure every Central Coast nonprofit, school, agency and group has similar tales about “accidental volunteers” and the confluence of good timing and good hearts.

Isn’t it great? Once again we’re reminded how lucky we are to live here — where the temporarily blocked alleyways of life can be seen as good things.

If you have an “accidental volunteer” tale, please post it as a comment here or e-mail it to ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Confessions of a Peep killer

2008-03-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

My name is Kathe. I’m a Peep killer.

I’m abjectly sorry, your honor. But there is no hope for me. I know that now.

It all started at a really serious meeting where the discussion — for some obscure reason — turned to making S’Mores in a microwave. There wasn’t one of us in the room under 40 years old, so you’d have thought we’d have better things to talk about.

Once the odd topic had been broached, I piped up, “It’s fun to watch what the microwave does to a marshmallow. It looks like a mutant float in the Macy’s parade, or the before photo in a Gas-X ad.”

Your honor, it was all downhill from there.

A friend who shall remain anonymous said that, “If you think S’Mores are fun to watch, you should try a Peep.”

You know what Peeps are, don’t you? Those biliously colored mouthfuls of oddly flavored fluff, marshmallows in drag as chickens and bunnies. They show up in rows in their tidy little yellow boxes on variety-store shelves a month or so before Easter, to be snapped up by basket-building parents and gobbled up by youngsters with no taste buds.

I thought I’d outgrown Peeps at the age of 3.

But no. It’s obviously an obsession that’s been latent all these years.
Right after that fateful meeting, I did what I haven’t done in years (sob, sob).

I bought some Peeps.

That’s all it took. Instantly, I sank into the depths of degradation.
And husband R. came with me. Two of us, together on the road to Peep Hell.

Yes, we did kill the Peep. Several of them in fact. And what’s even worse, we enjoyed it. We're so bad.

What did we do as soon as we got home? Did we put the ice cream in the freezer? Did we put the car in the garage? Did we even stop for an after-the-trip-to-San-Luis pit stop?

We did not. We senior citizens ripped open the box, grabbed a plate, and plucked out a vividly yellow chicken Peep.

Yes, we stood before the microwave and pondered what we were about to do. No, you honor, it was not a last-minute reflection before our transgression. We just couldn’t figure out how many seconds to key into the timer.

“We’ll try 10,” said husband R.

Your honor, it was spellbinding, addicting, depraved. The Peep just grew and grew, got rounder and rounder, until I was afraid it would explode.

(Would have served me right, too — I’m not sure the resulting culinary Super Glue would ever have come off the sides and ceiling of the microwave.)

“Not enough time,” said husband R, with a demonic look in his eyes. “Five more seconds.”

It had come to this. Counting down the demise of a helpless little marshmallow chick (which, by the way, was pretty chewy by the time it cooled off. The microwaves don’t do a thing for the flavor, either).

Oh, I know we are not alone. Others also obsess about the popular kiddie treats from Just Born Inc.

There are even Web sites that discuss the atrocities visited upon Marshmallow Peeps. One site lists various vile forms of torture: laser-exposure endurance, slow application of heat, flame tolerance, electrocution, oxygen deprivation, radiation tolerance, coyote test and hot-tub test.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. And I am repentant, honestly I am.

I’d throw myself on the mercy of the court, but I’m still so sticky, I’m afraid I’d never be able to pry myself off again.

So, keep me away from the Peeps. Help me save myself and those ghastly little globby blobs of goo. I am resolute, I shall not harm another Peep.

But even a reformed sinner has her limits. Just don't get me close to any chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies, or they're goners.

This column ran first in The Cambrian in April, 2000, and in The Tribune in April, 2001. It got a lot of attention and comments. In fact, one reader presents the columnist with a gift of Peeps each year in honor of the piece.

Microwave good buy

2008-03-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

It’s inevitable: If there’s a difficult or expensive way to learn a lesson, that’s the route I’ll take.

Say, for instance, our microwave oven.

We’d had the $450 unit for more than a decade. The sleek black-faced oven had survived the usual slings and arrows of appliance life — a couple of blown fuses that needed to be replaced, a chip out of its glass turntable, a bag of micro-popcorn left to pop on high far too long.

But we liked the microwave. It was a favorite cousin in the kitchen family. Familiar, friendly. Easy to use, even at 5 a.m. when my synapses hadn’t yet started synapping.

We knew how the oven worked, how it chimed when it was done, how long it took to perfectly reheat coffee in husband Richard’s favorite mug.

Besides, the countertop unit fit perfectly into its cubbyhole in the cabinet.

So, when the microwave suddenly stopped, we did what we’ve always done. We called for appliance repair. Through the decades, John of John’s Appliance Repair had patched up and glued back together various pieces of equipment in our original house.

For a time after we rebuilt following the fire in 1994, we hadn’t needed John’s services for a time – everything was under warranty. But this seemed a good time to enlist his aid again.

John looked at the oven and said, “Gee, if I’d known it wasn’t one of the over-the-stove microwaves, I could have saved you some money. You can buy a new countertop microwave for about what my service call costs, not counting repair parts.”

Bless his heart, he felt so guilty at not being able to fix the oven, he spent the rest of his service call checking out our other appliances.

Are microwave ovens really that cheap these days? To say we were skeptical would be vastly understating the case, rather like calling August weather in Palm Springs pleasantly warm.

After hitting the Internet and the phone, we were open-mouth astonished.

While the cost of other kitchen appliances had skyrocketed since we rebuilt the house — just try replacing a Sub-Zero refrigerator, buying a front-loading clothes washer or getting a dishwasher that runs quietly — we could buy a new microwave for under $100, although some were priced at more than a thousand bucks.

We headed into the shopping fray, tape measure in hand, to discover that not only were the ovens much less costly, they came with new features and accessories that had only been hinted at a decade ago.

There were convection cycles, to produce nicely browned surfaces, or “keep warm” features so your entrée doesn’t turn into a hockey puck.

(I wonder what happens to popcorn on a “warm” cycle?)

One unit even had a built-in toaster!

Eventually, my head began to swim the way it does when I go to a big box store during the week before Christmas, or try shopping for an entire afternoon at a gazillion-square-foot antique mall.
It was TMI — way too much information, when all we really wanted was our old microwave, or as close to it as we could get.

In the end, we paid about $150 for a new oven, plus the service charge for John’s helpful advice. The microwave fit in the cabinet and works just fine.

But it’s like having a bossy new dog in the house.

This oven chides me on a rolling screen of green print, reminding me I haven’t yet set the clock or told the microwave how much chicken I want to cook.

And the new unit nags. It beeps three times when the cycle’s done (the old one beeped once). Then, if you don’t open the door after a minute or so, the microwave beeps again. And again. And again.

But I will be strong. I will not take a sledge hammer to the new microwave, no matter how irritating it is.

I don’t want to have to go through this again. I’ve learned my lesson, the hard, expensive way. As usual.

BEST OF: Tagging the hard way

2008-02-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

As a reporter, I'm used to finding things in odd places -- a goat on a barn roof, a tree growing through the middle of a house, an elephant seal marching up Highway 1.

At home, I've found my cell phone in the refrigerator, my breakfast muffin in the closet and you don't even want to know all the places where I've eventually found my car keys.

But, even for me, it's a stretch to find a 6-year-old's birthday gift by the men's restroom at Wal Mart.

It all started with our decision to stop giving our grandchildren toys as special-occasion gifts.

Most kids already have enough playthings to stock their own Toys R Us branch. Some kids must host regular toy garage sales to have enough room to get into their bedrooms, let alone sleep there.

You've seen those compress-your-clothes bags that presumably make it easier to jam more stuff into your suitcase? That's what those youngsters need for their toy boxes.

So, in lieu of toys, we're trying to wrap up special experiences and family memories instead, taking them to shows and on vacations.

But the "experience gift" concept muddies a little with a younger child, who really does need a package or two to open.

No, not a toy. For a recent birthday, granddaughter Alyssa and her big sister Caitlyn each received a set of binoculars, for otter searches, tracking boats and birds, or even watching ballerinas on stage.

In preparation for the gift-giving, we gleefully bought two smallish pairs of Bushnells. Could I leave well enough alone?

Naturally not.

The girls need a way to differentiate between the two identical sets, I asserted. Labels would help alleviate the "Mine!" "No, those are mine!" arguments. And, with a name and phone number on each set somehow, a lost pair might -- just might -- get returned.

The tags had to be sturdy, but not too big, or they'd get in the way of little hands. The labels must be big enough to read easily or they'd be useless.

Luggage tags were the obvious answer, but way too big. So were wrap-around, business-card bands for briefcase or suitcase handles.

Little, round write-on key tags with the metal frames around them? Too flimsy. We purchased brightly colored, plastic auto-key tags. Clunky, but they'd work. It was a start.

We searched Cambria, San Luis, all over the Central Coast. I checked catalogs for camera supplies, office supplies, auto, gifts, travel.

The ideas got more convoluted. How about small plastic envelopes, into which we'd insert a printed card, and through which we'd punch a hole and thread a double-loop key-ring or leather strap? We bought them, came home to try them, and they screamed out "funky."

Later, we found some quarter-sized brass disks with holes at the top.

"I can engrave a name and phone number on this," husband Richard bragged. While I wondered if anybody would be able to read his engraving, I agreed to let him try.

We kept looking. "How about ...?" "Nah, won't work." "Maybe, if we ..." "Fahgedit."

In our three-day search, we accumulated lots of "not quites," sore feet, a massive gasoline bill and a lot of frustration.

Discouraged, we gave up. I left our last-resort stop, Wal Mart, heading for the van, while Richard stopped at the restroom. Moments later, he came bouncing back to me, like a golden retriever that discovered a Nerf ball. "Come with me! I found it! I found it!"

At the men's room? Sure enough.

He led me to a machine set up right outside the restroom -- a contraption we've all seen in hotel lobbies, amusement parks and tourist traps. The computerized device engraves tags for dog collars.

Bingo!

About 10 minutes, $16 dollars and four tags later, we had our solution: Little metal hearts, each engraved with the girls' hometown and phone number, plus "Alyssa, age 6" or "Caitlyn, age 9" (anyone who finds binoculars belonging to a 6 year old and doesn't feel guilty about not returning them should be deep-fried).

All this has been a lesson. We do want to share experiences with our offspring, but bullheadedness isn't one of them. Of course, we want them to have open minds while trying to solve problems, and to keep their eyes open for unlikely possibilities.

But this was absurd.

And yes, our next garage sale will feature the Tanner Spring Collection of rejected designer tags.

This column appeared originally on March 17, 2005, in The Cambrian.

Otter mother and child reunion

2008-02-21T16:34:00.000-08:00

You look around frantically, but your child is missing. It’s a scenario that strikes terror into the heart of any parent.

We have no way of knowing if that’s what was happening to an otter mom in the surf off Moonstone Beach on Feb. 7. But we sure can guess.

According to rescuers from The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC), a baby otter was squealing loudly that day — not from the water, but from the rocks. Wisely, someone called center’s response hotline.

Trained volunteers P.J. Webb and Teri Woodhouse caught the call, and were soon joined by State Park Ranger Will Rushworth.

They couldn’t see the pup from the bluff. A witness showed the rescuers where the yowling otter was trapped, behind a rock in the rugged intertidal area just north of the boardwalk’s observation point.

Then the little otter stopped squealing — not a good sign.

By phone, TMMC’s rescue line and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Research and Conservation team told P.J., Teri and Will to attempt a rescue. P.J. and Will climbed down the bluff and found the pup trapped about 3 feet down in a narrow, twisted crevasse above a cave.

Ominously, the tide was beginning to turn. As it and the strong waves rose, water would crash down into the rock cave.

Time was getting short for the little otter. If the crooked crevasse filled with water, he could drown. As he fought to get out, he was falling further down toward the cave.

Protected by a towel and gloves because otters bite, P.J. reached for the pup and saw he already was showing signs of stress. He wasn’t happy about anyone trying to get him out of the cave, even though that certainly wasn’t where he wanted to be.

P.J. extricated him and carried the wriggling, snapping bundle up the bluff.

Teri, a trained medical staff rescuer, examined him very carefully. He was a male in good condition, of good weight and with a healthy appearance. Somehow, he had escaped injury in the jagged, rocky cave and rescuers had arrived soon enough to make a difference.

Otter veterinarians told the rescue team by phone to try reuniting the pup with his mother, a maneuver that’s rarely successful, unfortunately.

The eagle-eyed rescuers had spotted some adult otters swimming nearby, but didn’t yet know if one of them was looking for the baby. P.J. and Will loaded the pup into an animal carrier and headed for a protected tidepool. As Will and Teri scanned the sea to see if an adult otter would react, P.J. opened the carrier door.

Because the pup wasn’t yet making any noise to attract his mother, P.J. put him into the tidepool. Much to the rescuers’ relief, the little otter immediately began swimming and grooming in the water. As he became cooler and calmer in his natural surroundings, his physical condition improved and he started squealing those high-pitched, piercing sounds that baby otters use to connect with their mothers.

The pup struggled his way into and through the strong surf, making his way to where waves form. His benefactors stayed on high alert, ready to rescue him again if Mom didn’t show up.

The little swimmer was screaming up a storm … and finally an adult otter made a beeline for him.

The rescuers held their collective breath as the adult and the pup touched noses and greeted each other with cries and squeals. When the mama otter began grooming the pup, he stopped yelping and settled in for good bath … and maybe a “where did you go this time?” scolding.

The rescuers climbed back up the bluff “with an empty carrier and very happy hearts,” according to P.J.’s notes. She said it was a thrill to successfully reunite a mother and her offspring.

P.J. also was very relieved the rescued pup didn’t use his sharp teeth on her. “I credit good training (from TMMC) and fast reflexes in saving all 10 of my digits!”

Thanks to quick response from the public and the skill of trained rescuers, one tiny member of a threatened species had survived another day.

Thanks to P.J. Webb for sharing her memories of that wonderful reunion.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Building a castle and a school

2008-02-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

It’s always a treat to learn more about people who helped shape our hometown.

When historical author Taylor Coffman spoke to about 80 people at the Cambria Historical Society’s annual membership meeting (in 2003), he introduced us to George Loorz, the man who built much of Hearst Castle, along with the Cambria Grammar School, the buildings that are now Robin’s restaurant, Fermentations and Heart Glass gallery, plus several others in Cambria and throughout the county.

Coffman also recalled that the current Robin's restaurant building, which Loorz constructed for Frank and Mabel Souza, had a “basement, which, on occasion, hosted merrymaking, both in the making of hooch and the imbibing of it. Even though I, no old-timer for sure, remember partying in that basement, which is built like a bomb shelter. Another young guy was living there ... and rehearsing his rock-and-roll band in the basement. That bunker did put out some decibels!”

Coffman could only share a fraction of what he knows about the dapper builder. Even his big book, “Building for Hearst and Morgan: Voices from the George Loorz Papers,” can’t contain all that the author has learned about the builder in a decade or so of intensive research.

In Coffman’s own words, from e-mails we exchanged, “Here's some ‘dope’ on George Loorz (that's a term he would have used):

“He was born in 1898 on a farm in Lovelock, Nev., northeast of Reno. The man left the farm to go into World War I, but the farm never left the man. Loorz was an earthy, manly, unpretentious guy all his life. However, he had ambition and an ego as big as a freight train, as his sons would be quick to say. Without that trait, he could scarcely have gone one-on-one with the likes of Hearst for so many years. Not to mention his knack for handling Julia Morgan so successfully,” Coffman conjectured.

“Loorz graduated from Cal Berkeley, School of Engineering (plus he picked up a degree in math for good measure).”

He had three sons, “Don in 1926, Bill in 1928, Bob in 1935. All followed their dad into the family business, namely, the F. C. Stolte Co., in which George held a half-interest. The involvement, and the continuation of Stolte Inc. (as it was renamed during World War II), lasted into the 1970s,” Coffman said.

Grace Loorz (they were married in 1925), also was a native Nevadan. “She briefly worked as a school teacher before becoming a full-time homemaker.” During the years the family lived on the North Coast, she attended Santa Rosa Catholic Church. ”

The Loorz family, based in Berkeley by the 1920s, was connected with Hearst and Julia Morgan beginning in 1927. The family lived fulltime at San Simeon from February 1932 through January 1938” (the six years covered in the book).

“Then they moved to Pacific Grove, and after that back to the Bay Area (Alameda). The ‘Hearst connection,’ in one form or another, lasted a full 20 years, from that first incident in '27 on through 1948. So it goes well past the six years of on-the-job residence at San Simeon itself.”

The book is filled with North Coast tales. For instance, on page 202, Coffman relates how Loorz and a buddy of his went to the Cambria Pines Lodge and got into a "confrontation" of sorts with the locals, some of whom thought W.R. Hearst was a villain.

“Loorz defused the crisis, winningly so, as he was so adept at doing time and again, situation after diverse situation. He was a diplomat and schmoozer par excellence: that's one reason Hearst and Morgan paid him as lavishly as they did: $5,200 a year, plus free rent, was nothing to sneeze at. It was big money, the salary alone being the equivalent of 65 or 70 grand in today's dollars, much of which Loorz was able to salt away for the good of his business partnership with Fred Stolte.

“In addition, Loorz was smart and hard working, not just slick and country-gentlemanly,” Coffman explained. “I've likened him to Jimmy Stewart in the book, that combination of shrewd homespun-ness . . . and native good looks, to boot. It made for a most winning formula, one that Loorz capitalized on to the hilt, but without a trace of cynicism. Today, such a guy would be PC-ed out of existence. He belongs to a bygone era of heroes, our small equivalent in Cambria-San Simeon of Paul Bunyan or John Henry.”

This column first ran in The Cambrian on March 20, 2003.

Note: On Saturday, Marcy, 15, the Cambria Historical Society's annual membership meeting and buffet lunch will be held at noon in Rabobank's meeting room, 1070 Main St. Tickets for members are $15, and $18 for nonmembers (sponsor and benefactor members get in for free). Reservations must be made by March 6. This year's topics are the the history of Highway 1 and the latest news on the society's restoration of the Guthrie-Bianchini house and garden, due to become the town's first historical museum. For details or reservations, call 909-0194 or e-mail katbriles@att.net.

Central Coast get-away: a progressive picnic

2008-02-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

What fun! We’ve found a different way to share our area with visiting family, enjoy a beautiful day and not wear anybody down or out.

After some hemming and hawing about what to do, we went on a progressive picnic. In the process, the four of us did a little shopping, dodged a bird-watching event, sightsaw and wandered on a 60-mile tour.

Son Richard and his wife, Robin, live in Reno. They had managed to beat the snow on Donner Pass for their first visit here in a long time and first ever without kids along.

Finally, they were here, but then they had to decide how they wanted to spend their two free days.

Friday was easy. While I worked, husband Richard showed off his elephant seals in all their snorting-birthing-breeding-fighting-and-sleeping January glory. After some Cambria browsing, we stopped at the farmers market to cap off a leisurely day … relaxing, interesting and not too hectic.

But they still had one more vacation day. The county was their playground; they just had to pick the sport.

They’ve toured Hearst Castle and driven up Highway 1 many times. They love both, but decided, no, not on this trip.

A movie? Are you kidding? Sitting inside a theater on such a gloriously sunny day just wasn’t an option.

More browsing in Cambria? Maybe, but shopping in San Luis Obispo sounded too determinedly energetic. We all wanted to do something different, an activity that would extend the relaxation of their previous day.

Adrift on R&R’s sea of indecision, I finally mapped out the afternoon. We’d go on a leisurely, multi-town shopping excursion, browsing and stocking up for a gourmet picnic.

With a menu in mind, I tossed some necessities into our picnic backpack and a cooler, and we were on our way, stopping first in Harmony to wander through the Pottery Works and the funky little town itself.

Then we hit Ruddell’s Smokehouse in Cayucos. The smokery is about the size of a double-wide phone booth and houses a closet-sized kitchen, the smoker, a menu board and a large refrigerated case packed with smoky lusciousness.

We picked up brown-sugar-smoked salmon, ahi jerky and a few laughs with “Smoker Jim.”

Around the corner, R&R did some wine tasting at Cayucos Cellars and met our longtime friend Laura Selkirk, who for years had groped around in our mouths as assistant to Cambria dentist Jill Poulos.

Our next destination? Morro Bay. On that annual bird-watching-festival weekend, the whole town was packed. Even so, we squeezed into the Embarcadero’s La Parisienne bakery (actually on Front Street) and snagged the last cream-frosted chocolate cake and an exotic-looking basil-and-tomato-topped baguette.

Our last shop-stop for the picnic was at Giovanni’s for fresh cooked-and-cracked crab and some sauces.

With our portable larder filled, we headed for Montaña de Oro … which R&R had never seen.

Now, we knew every square inch of the shoreline would be jammed with binoculars held by avid birders. No problem. We turned left instead, away from the bluff and into the nearly empty picnic area.

Total population? Just us, another small family group and a large covey of quibbling quail.

We spread plastic on our table, unpacked our lunch and relaxed under the bright sun in the relative quiet of our own little valley. We ate and talked. Sat and talked. Walked around and talked. It’s amazing what you can learn about your own children when theirs aren’t along.

Soon, we’d picked clean every crab, devoured the bread, emptied the slaw bowl (if you'd like the recipe, send me an e-mail) and demolished the small cake. Beyond replete, we packed away our crab tools (including the real essentials — disposable chopsticks!), rolled up all the messy stuff in the plastic table cover and tossed the detritus into the trash can.

Instant cleanup! It was almost as good as my private dream … a kitchen that flushes!

We ambled home and watched the sunset paint vivid shades on the sky and sea.

It had been a perfect afternoon. We’d meandered and relaxed, introduced our family to some of our friends, shopped a bit, had a gourmet lunch and enjoyed being out and about together on the beautiful Central Coast.

The key word is together, and it just doesn’t get any better than that.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

Cambria caring and chicken feed

2008-01-30T12:33:00.000-08:00

This column appeared first on June 27, 2002, in The Cambrian

There’s something about the phrase “knee-replacement surgery” that makes people flinch a lot, turn a little green around the gills and rapidly change the subject. It’s even worse than saying “root canal” or “IRS audit.”

I don’t blame them, especially since husband Richard had that operation. We’ve both been flinching ever since.

However, the experience has retaught us what a wide spectrum of friends we have here in Cambria — and what a diverse, loving, quirky, supportive, wonderful bunch they are.

In our little corner of the world, any tragedy, illness or major disruption to your lifestyle brings people out of the woodwork, and they all chip in to try to make things better for the afflicted, the bereaved, the displaced. Each in their own way, of course.

We’re eternally grateful for the love and caring that has surrounded us though many years like a fluffy down comforter.

After the knee surgery, Richard progressed through his pain-killer haze to take those first awful steps to hobbling along as he leaned on his walker. He got better every day, in baby steps, so to speak.

But something else struck us as we thought back on the thoughtfulness of our friends and associates.

It was the variety of their responses, so typically Cambrian, where the only thing that this bunch of individualists shares is nobody is like anybody else. Everybody is a one-of-a-kind.

Even in the get-well cards, there was a huge range of types. Some were gently flowery, others raucous or loopy or very funny, still others prayerful. Some were hand painted or custom printed, others slick pieces of art, some hand lettered, still others e-mailed.

One even offered to find Dick some “mud-wrestling wenches” to take his mind off the pain.

All, of course, were deeply appreciated (except maybe that last one).

Each card was extremely individualistic, to the point where some wouldn’t even have had to be signed. We’d have known instantly who sent them.

Other friends offered advice or suggestions for things to help the swelling go away or the pain diminish. Some suggestions worked, some didn't. But all sounded like good ideas and were welcomed in the same spirit in which they were offered.

Some folks brought candy or goodies. Others brought flowers or fuzzy stuffed animals.

And then there was Richard’s surgical mentor Shirley Bianchi, who had the same surgery a couple of months earlier. For weeks, she covered the gamut of friendship with frequent counseling and commiseration, plus a pre-surgical CD to help Richard relax, a portable commode to help him rise to the occasion (so to speak), a pair of crutches and five bags of chicken feed.

Yup. Chicken feed.

Seems her wonderful rancher husband Bill Bianchi had discovered that a Ziploc bag filled with frozen chicken feed, put into a pillowcase, makes a wonderful icepack.

It’s not too cold, it forms well to the area that hurts and holds the cold for quite a while. The chicken feed doesn’t drip when it warms up, won’t freeze into bricks the way gel packs often do, and, best of all, it’s cheap, cheap, cheap to replace. (We did, however, put the feed into two Ziploc bags as insurance against a really nasty mess.)

So, the next time somebody talks to you about something that really makes you flinch, maybe you should offer ‘em some chicken feed.

Unless it’s the IRS auditor. He’d never understand.

Mrs. Hodge Podge

2008-01-23T17:57:00.000-08:00

After the coordinated chaos of the holidays, you’d think I’d be raring to get myself together in the new year. Instead, my January mindset keeps jumping around like a one-legged rabbit on a trampoline.

Since I’m operating on snippets of intellect these days, that’s all you’ll get in this space today.

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Sometimes, the English language (or, more accurately, the U.S.-ish language) just tickles the daylights out of me.

A friend told me about a San Luis Obispo cop who was trying to haul someone to jail so the inebriate could sleep it off. The wobbly detainee protested loudly, “You can’t arrest me. I’ve got my arrestitutional rights.”

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I hate buying a new cellular phone. But this time I’ve been told — rather peremptorily, I thought — that I don’t have a choice.

I won’t get into the pro or con debate about putting disguised cellular towers on Fiscalini Ranch Preserve. I love trees, I believe in safeguarding protected property. I rely heavily on my cell phone.

‘Nuff said.

But I believe it’s a given that cell reception and broadcast quality in Cambria are the pits.

How bad is it? In order to do my job on the North Coast, I have to carry two phones, one each from two different carriers. Even then, I can only connect to a network about half the time.

So, when a cellular provider — unfortunately, it’s the one with the best signal in most areas — tells me I’ve got until Feb. 18 to switch phones, it does get my attention. But the situation makes me want to stamp my feet and shake my fists like a petulant 4-year-old.

My “old style” cell phone is about to go the way of running boards, dodo birds and carbon paper. The carrier is disconnecting from the analog network that shuttles calls to my phone.

Grump, grump.

As is the case with most people in Cambria, I hate being told what I must do or what’s going to happen, without me being able to put in my two-cents worth before the decision is made.

I don’t want to go to San Luis Obispo to buy a new phone. I don’t want a new phone. I especially don’t want to go through the angst-ridden decision-making process again … especially when it’s not my idea.

In this case I just want a phone that always connects to people I call or who call me. Is that too much to ask?

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Overheard on a San Francisco street corner, one enthusiastic fellow to another: “I just can’t believe you’re walking around with no underwear on!”

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Several readers asked how The Cambrian got your news to The Tribune during the big storm earlier this month.

The short answer is: from my kitchen.

Nearly all of Cambria, including the newspaper’s offices, was without power for quite a while. No lights, no phones, no desktop computers, no Internet.

That doesn’t, of course, mean no news.

Fortunately our house has several old-fashioned, hard-wired telephones that function during power outages. If you don’t have one in your home, I strongly recommend getting one.

During the storm, when I wasn’t out in the rain and wind dodging falling branches and taking photos of scrunched homes and vehicles, I was standing at my kitchen counter, taking notes by lantern light and using my chin to clutch the prehistoric phone against my shoulder.

Because I had no way to send the latest news from my battery-powered laptop computer to the City Desk in San Luis Obispo, I’d call in the updates.

It was like being in an old Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn movie. I kept expecting someone to run through the dining room yelling, “Rewrite! Stop the presses.”

Later, The Tribune went through much more serious travails with the nightly print deadline looming.

They had no lights, no regular phones, no electricity and a malfunctioning generator. Even so, the team managed to put out a paper anyway by relying on remarkably stubborn ingenuity, the help of friends and several far-flung offsite locations.

They’re amazing. My hat’s off to ’em.

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Sticker seen on the back bumper of a big, big brute of a four-by: “Get over it, guys. Trucks are for gals!”
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BEST OF: Type casting

2008-01-17T20:57:00.000-08:00

This column ran in The Cambrian in the late 1980s.

We went away for a few days and came home to six bills, two letters, five solicitations and a stack of catalogs thick enough to challenge the phone books from all five New York boroughs … including Yellow Pages.

I understand about mailing lists. I know catalog folks get my name from various sources. The most common seem to be based on zip code, phone exchange, the credit cards I use, the magazines and newspapers I read and what I‘ve ordered from companies whose catalogs I got last year.

It may sound rational (if invasive), but in actual practice, something gets lost in the translation.

For instance, I once ordered a military-issue coverlet called a “poncho liner.” It only weighs a few ounces, it folds up to almost nothing, it’s got a nice smooth surface and it’s very warm ... great for traveling or those cold-toes days.

The firm from which I got the poncho liner obviously blabbed about it to the entire free world. So now my mailbox is overstuffed with everything from survival catalogs to a sample subscription to “Soldier of Fortune” magazine.

They must have a different me in mind than the one I see in the mirror every morning.

And that wildly colored jacket I bought, the one that looks like the remains of a religious stained-glass window after an earthquake?

I didn’t get the matching outfit ... pants, top and vest ... because the effect of the entire, intense package undoubtedly could louse up color-TV resolution for miles and would probably cause planes heading for LAX to set down somewhere near the Grand Canyon.

No, I only bought the jacket, which I wear with basic black when I need to feel really bright.

However, somebody may have misread those retailing signals, too. I now regularly receive a “Fashion Catalog for Today’s Black Woman.”

We obviously have a failure in communication here.

Catalogs aren’t the only printed matter that proliferates without regard to public need or wants, or the amount of space in my mailbox. How about the limited magazine racks at the drug store?

Obviously, magazine publishers have been watching the catalog companies and have now gone and done likewise.

“W” and “GQ” spawned a rampaging alphabet of single- and double-letter magazines, all of which should have a cheat sheet for those of us who do not instantly recognize what the letter(s) stand for.

Then “Vanity Fair” led to “Lears,” a magazine for us middle-aged baby-boomettes. “Lears” got imitated by “Moxie.”

For the career gal, there is “Woman,” “Working Woman,” “Working Parent,” “Pregnant Working Woman” and “Working Family.” (Blogger's note: Some of these magazines are no longer published.)

There are stacks of magazines for people who diet, use computers, surf or hot-air-balloon. On and on and on … and all I really wanted was a TV guide to replace the one the dog ate.

Any day now, I expect to see a magazine expressly for the pregnant 45-year-old single blonde roller-skating water skier who raises dogs and snakes, plays “Jeopardy” in her nightgown, lives in a 75-year-old renovated grain silo in Omaha and has kinky ideas about popcorn.

Whoever she is, I hope she likes catalogs, because a whole bunch of those people are going to find out about her, real soon.

She’s just their type.

Curve ball, straight talk

2008-01-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

When life throws a curve ball at us, we only have a millisecond to figure out how to catch it and what to do with it.

For instance, on Dec. 27, husband Richard and I were heading back to the van with granddaughters Caitlyn, 12, and Alyssa, 8, after an unsuccessful shopping search for posters of Hannah Montana and other ’tween idols.

We’d had a wonderful laugh-and-hug-filled visit. We’d shared Christmas Day together in three different homes. Four girls had mastered games, embraced new dolls and modeled new duds.
Then Caitlyn and Alyssa stayed with us until early Thursday afternoon, which was loving, fun and very instructive.

For instance, we learned that a waffle-maker type device can produce decent, tiny doughnuts, and that chocolate icing can wind up in the strangest places.

We discovered that little household touches make a big difference, even to pre-teens, and a skateboard becomes a “RipStik” when the dumbbell-shaped device has two inline-style caster wheels and a complex pivoting hinge in the middle.

A RipStikker is part surfer-snowboarder, part “Cirque du Soleil” contortionist and all magician. On a RipStik, you can wind up with a left foot heading north and right foot going east, which can lead to some interesting splits.

I also discovered that when a former super-skateboarder … ahem … matures a bit … ahem … he may not be as adaptable to such radical changes as he used to be.

Caitlyn is an experienced RipStikker, so she soared around the pavement, looping and twisting and flashing victory signs. Learner Alyssa held onto her daddy’s hands as she wiggled her feet back and forth, trying to get up enough momentum to actually go forward.

Then it was Daddy’s turn.

At first, our son Sean wobbled and nearly fell. Finally, with eyebrows slammed together, mouth pursed and arms gyrating for balance, he managed a few shaky passes. But as he inched past, the former boarder yelled out to me, “This is supposed to be fun?”

Meanwhile, back at the curve ball. Caitlyn pseudo-casually lobbed it. “So … Grandma, do you know anything about the Spears family?”

I knew where the conversation was heading. As my life flashed before my eyes, I wondered how much the girls’ parents would want me to say and … gulp … if I was up for this, right there in a Target parking lot.

I caught the conversational ball. “I know more about the Spears than I ever wanted to know. Why do you ask?”

With downcast eyes, Caitlyn asked, “What about Jamie Lynn?”

Yup, I knew it.

“Well, it’s all over the news that she’s pregnant at 16, and not married,” I said, trying to master the art of walking with both feet in my mouth at the same time — much trickier than RipStik riding.

“How do you feel about her pregnancy?” I asked our grandgirls about the star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101” hit show.

“Very disappointed. Jamie Lynn said she wasn’t going to turn out like Britney, and now she has,” Caitlyn said as her little sister nodded so vigorously that her hair flew back and forth like hummingbird wings.

I asked, “If you could talk to Jamie Lynn, what would you say to her?”

Caitlyn spread her hands at shoulder height, shrugged and said, “I’d ask her ‘Why?’ ”

We talked a lot then about Jamie Lynn, Britney and life. Our girls are disappointed that their squeaky-clean super-heroine turned into a fault-prone human being who makes mistakes. In other words, Jamie Lynn is just like the rest of us.

Eventually, the girls understood that making a mistake — even a serious, life-changing one — is different than living in a downward spiral filled with self-destructive actions.

I said, “I hope Jamie Lynn will enjoy being a mommy.”

Caitlyn answered, “I hope she’ll take good care of the baby. I hope she has learned her lesson. I hope she’ll be OK. I hope she will be happy ... I hope she won’t turn out like Britney.”

“Me, too,” said Alyssa.

So, what did I learn on our holiday vacation?

Well, I certainly won’t be getting on a RipStik in this lifetime. I’ve relearned that curve-ball catching can be thought-provoking.

And we’ve got super wonderful granddaughters. But I already knew that.

BEST OF: Scrambled dregs for a new year

2008-01-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

The original version of this column ran March 4, 2004, in The Cambrian.

Baryshnikov does Verizon:

It could be a new Olympic sport, but too many people are good at it. It's not particularly graceful … but then, neither is wrestling or shot-put. And this posture is just as identifiable as those struck by a golfer at the tee, a figure skater preparing for a triple axel or a diver bouncing on the end of the board.

The modern version is what I call feng shui of the body, because everything has to be arranged just so, aligned with mystical broadcast waves, the wind and the pull of the moon.

Envision rigid shoulders, clenched fist, tilted head and distracted expression of someone standing in the middle of a busy street, and you'll be seeing a cell-phone user trying to complete a call in Cambria.

"Can you hear me now?" Probably not.

The posture mimics frozen poses of yore. Remember holding a rabbit-ears TV antenna out the window so somebody else could watch a show? Or trying to hail a taxi while out in the rain, without looking like a drowning Pomeranian?

There are few areas of Camabria where you can actually walk and cell-talk at the same time. At my house, a cell phone will ring only when it’s on the charger, but the call won’t stay connected if I unplug the phone.

Yes, technology has a long way to go here. And the debate continues about whether to allow disguised cell-phone towers on the protected land of Fiscalini Ranch Preserve.

In the meantime, here's a fund-raising idea for Caltrans, county Public Works or even the Cambria Community Services District: Find the 10 places in downtown Cambria where most cell-phone systems work, and put up street signs identifying same.

Then charge 50 cents a minute to park nearby.

My “to don't” list:

What a mess: Bills, letters, cryptic notes I can no longer decipher, messages, catalogs I'll never peruse, grocery, shopping and chore lists, magazines I'll never read, newspapers, things I've printed out but haven't tossed out and ticket stubs from a 2002 vacation.

The towering stacks of paper form a veritable monument to fallen trees, a wobbly edifice that threatens to take over our world.

The paperwork congregates on counters and tables, our desks, my files (if they get that far!) and a footstool between our easy chairs. Then the papers go forth and multiply, like field mice, wire hangers and unmated socks.

Eventually, most Tanner paperwork winds up in baskets. For an ambitious piece of paper, being sentenced to “the basket” is a fate worse than last year's file-storage boxes.

Paper-Amnesty International has a special strike team for Tanner baskets.

We’ll just muddle along in our documentary chaos, and then we'll get word that company's coming to visit. Awk! Panic!

There are two possible courses of action: sort through the papers and clean the baskets, counters, chairs, etc., or pile everything in a bigger basket that can then be hidden in a closet.

If I did the latter, Fire Chief Bob Putney would start issuing mandatory demolition orders.

So, I recently began to dig through the stacks, resulting in an image not unlike a chunky dachshund digging in a badger hole.

Now we have a new unwritten Tanner law: never, ever keep "to do" lists.

It’s plumb discouraging to find a year-old record and realize how little of it I’ve accomplished during the past 12 months.

Worse yet is realizing how many things I did do that now have to be done again.

Call of the wild

2007-12-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

About Thanksgiving, I began hearing the strangest, most eerie sounds that seemed a blend of honk, moan and call of the wild. The long, loud, repetitive noises seemed to come from the ocean.

What were they like? To me, they sounded like the unlikely cross between a mournful moose and a thoroughly ticked-off goose.

Quickly I scanned the sea from horizon to shore, ready to summon paramedics and North Coast Ocean Rescue volunteers if a stranded or injured human was yelling for help. Hmmmmm. No people in distress. No marine mammal fighting for its life. Just waves, kelp, birds and an otter bashing his chest with an unlucky crustacean-cum-dinner.

The cry of a dying crab? I don’t think so.

I heard the sounds off and on that day, always in sets of consecutive, separate cries. But I never had any luck in seeing what I was hearing.

After days of these occasional sounds, I sent out my own cyber-cries, using e-mail to get help identifying the noisemaker. Perhaps some of the marine and wildlife experts who live nearby might have heard the same thing.

Some had.

Margaret “P.J.” Webb of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s Advisory Council and The Marine Mammal Center said the sounds might have been alert calls from a “sea lion asserting his ‘King of the Rock’ status.”

But don’t sea lions bark? We hear them all the time from the so-called “Seal Rock.”

Michele Roest, marine sanctuary staffer, suggested that at night, such sounds might be from a black-crowned night heron, a day sleeper. “At dusk, when they wake up, they emit very loud, harsh raucous shrieks, one at a time for a series of a few minutes — truly very unpleasant sounds.”

But we heard the noises during the day.

Don Canestro lives on and manages Rancho Marino. He, too, thought the sounds might be from a sea lion. But each time he and wife Miranda heard the loud, mournful moans, they had also seen the blow, or steam-laden exhalation, from a humpback whale.

So he suggested that maybe we all were hearing above-water vocalizations of a humpback — certainly the most romantic idea so far.

Others had different explanations, but nobody seemed to know for sure. Then, about 4 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 16, I heard it again. This time, the noisemaker sounded really angry or anguished. Looking at the ocean again, I saw two stand-up paddle surfers, heading out to catch the waves.

Had that been the source all along? Had surfers been yelling at each other? I didn’t think so, but when you’re stumped, you grasp at straws … or paddles, as the case may be.

When husband Richard and I saw the surfers coming in for the night, we walked down to talk to them.

Kevin Barrett, who lives between Cambria and Highway 46, and Treve Jones of Cayucos explained the lure of their sport.

It’s the beauty of the area, the Zen of competing with the ocean … and “I do it for exercise, to help my injured back,” Barrett said. “I can’t pull myself up” on a regular board any more.

I didn’t know enough about it to argue with him, but paddle-surfing with a bad back? I was skeptical. It’s a mighty athletic sport, and I had seen a big wave wipe Barrett out pretty thoroughly.

I asked if the surfers had been yelling to each other earlier.

Barrett said, “Yeah, sure.” Then his eyes widened and he asked, “But did you hear that sea lion we saw out there? It was LOUD!”

“We thought maybe it was being eaten,” Jones said, “or it had lost its baby, but this isn’t baby season for sea lions,” and the mammal they saw seemed OK.

Later, Don Canestro confirmed it, having watched the same sea lion as it issued those weird, eerie noises.

I guess the mystery was solved. So, why was I disappointed that my moose-goose calls were just ongoing gripes from a grouchy sea lion with mutant vocal cords and good lungs?

Or, as P.J. suggested whimsically, perhaps our ocean-going noisemaker is a “reincarnated opera singer.”

Give us your aria again, baby. At least we know you’re OK out there.

Note: P.J. Webb suggests listening to recorded animal sounds (sorry, no moose-goose) at www.dosits.org/gallery/intro.htm.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Christmas is for sharing ... and cookies

2007-12-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

For years, magazines have presented us with options for Christmas dinner. Turkey or roast beef, goose or ham? Or maybe something quirky and unusual?

The options seem endless, until you consider that, in many families, the Christmas menu is almost sacred. To change it would cause mass revolt, which wouldn’t be very festive.

Sometimes, however, the periodicals would focus less on Christmas Day, and try instead to convince us to change our Christmas Eve repast.

My grandmother “Ganny” and her maid Aino, from Finland, had that covered with tradition, too. Every year, they’d serve an elaborate adult-only Christmas Eve buffet. After the children were asleep, the grown-ups would nosh as they put up and decorated the 12-foot-tall tree and did everything else Santa’s helpers do.

Realize, however, that my grandmother didn’t work outside of the home, so she had time for such elaborate endeavors. Also, Aino did the drudge chores, like dusting, changing sheets, cooking the usual meals and washing dishes.

And, since all the holiday menus were cast in bronze, so to speak, Ganny didn’t even have to worry about complex menu planning. There was no pressure to change it just for the sake of change.

So, her gift shopping was complete by Dec. 15; her elaborate package wrapping done by the 20th. She had a wonderland of time to devote those incredible Christmas cookies, which were her specialties. (But I’m willing to bet Aino chopped the pecans and ground the almonds in those pre-Cuisinart days!)

For weeks, the house carried a warm smell of almonds and cinnamon, ginger and anise, brown sugar and butter.

It was paradise for us kids. Even now, all those aromas remind me of my childhood and Ganny.
Memories are the cornerstone of Christmas. Maybe that’s why holiday traditions are so important.

I remember tiptoeing down the long staircase and peeking behind the archway screen to see a huge, dazzling tree that hadn’t been there when I had gone to sleep the night before.

Youngsters were required to eat cereal and milk before we could dive into our pile of gifts. That quarter-cup of cornflakes made the biggest, most unmanageable bowl of breakfast you can imagine when the 5-year-old at the table didn’t want to be there at all.

After we’d dismantled the gift wrappings, we sat down to the official Christmas breakfast: scrambled eggs, Jones sausage links, fruit, orange juice and other appropriate beverages … and coffeecake.

Since we lived in New York, you’d assume that Ganny could have selected from Danish kringles, Italian panettones, German stollens and other classical Christmas coffeecakes.

She could have. But she didn’t.

Our homemade Christmas coffeecake always was a simple cinnamon-crumb cake that bears a striking resemblance to the one of the Bisquick box. And we loved it.

Ganny also managed to very neatly solve the Christmas turkey-ham-or-roast-beef dilemma. She simply invited SO many people to the dinner feast that she had to serve all three to have enough food for all.

Her dining table was extended to its fullest 14-foot length, and I do mean full. When anybody talks about the “holiday groaning board,” I know they mean my grandmother’s Christmas dinner table.

But, of all the traditions, the ones we loved best were about Christmas cookies. Making and decorating them. Giving them as gifts. And, of course, eating them.

Christmas was Springerle and macaroons, fruit bars, meringues, sprintz, mailanderli and speculaas. Thick ginger cookies and thin, crisp gingerbread men. It was sugar-cookie cutouts of trees and wreaths and Santa Claus, all decorated by loving hands. It was cookies made with walnuts and almonds, pecans and hazelnuts, candied peels and glaceéd cherries and plenty of spices.

My favorite memories of my dignified, society-matron grandmother are of her laughing as she wielded her rolling pin over some sort of Christmas-cookie dough … wearing a dusting of powdered sugar on her nose and an apron bedecked with flour, butter and cinnamon.

I miss Ganny most of all at this time of year. She was the heart of Christmas. It was her season, the one time when her sophisticated lifestyle allowed her to be a kid again.

So, I do things her way. I wrap as she did, writing special, funny tags. I give gag gifts. The menus stay the same. I make the same cookies. And I share Christmas dinner with as many people as possible.

That way, it’s almost as if she’s still with me during the holiday season.

I guess that’s what Christmas traditions really are all about.

This column ran in December 1982 in The Tribune and The Cambrian.

That’s a wrap – almost

2007-12-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

As I write this at 5 p.m. on the second Sunday in December, I’m trapped in my own house, held hostage by dogs, dragons, a goofy moose and a rattlesnake.

They’re among dozens of unwrapped holiday presents — most of which needed to be in the mail last week.

I love giving gifts, but I’ll swear I didn’t buy that many.

The presents and the stuff to wrap them with have commandeered our living space, inch by inch, couch by chair by countertop until there is no room left for us.

I must wrap, wrap, wrap — or sleep standing up.

I, too, have been decorated by the glitzy uprising, but Ralph Lauren would not approve. Glue remnants on my fingers, elbows and nose have attracted a frosting of Styrofoam pellets and slivers of gift wrap. Ribbon is jauntily draped over my left ear. I have pens and scissors tucked in the top of my bra (my shirt doesn’t have pockets). And I look like I’ve been playing cat’s cradle with Scotch Tape.

Few of the presents were expensive. In fact, most are gag gifts. But each was carefully selected for the recipient. Now we want to get all those boxes where they need to be, quickly … so we can sit down again.

The dining table is the chaos epicenter. It’s buried under scraps and strips of wrapping paper, twists of curling ribbon, stray tags and enough tape to hold the International Space Station together.

But Lord knows where we’ll eat dinner.

We can’t even dine standing up at the kitchen counter. Empty shipping boxes are stacked there until I figure out if any of them are big enough to do the job.

Our front hall is packed with stuffed cartons that need filler, tape and mailing labels. The plan had been to get them in the mail by Dec. 5.

Whimper, whine. The delay isn’t all my fault. Some gifts I ordered in early November are still on order, lurking out there somewhere, floating around in a virtual shopping cart on the World Wide Web.

It’s decision time: Do I mail the in-house presents tomorrow, so recipients could at least get some of their gifts by Christmas? Or can I wait a few more days on faith that the deliveries will finally arrive?

I feel like a bit like young Winthrop in "The Music Man," waiting for a mythical stagecoach.

So now it’s 9:30 p.m. and about half the gifts are wrapped. But many don’t yet have their ribbons or the time-consuming tags that, according to family tradition, must include customized puns or word clues.

In the meantime, well-placed Post-It Notes give me hints about what’s inside each package. If those fall off, I’ll have to start over. Not a happy thought.

My self-imposed Monday deadline looms.

For most people, the gnarliest part of sending gifts happens later: waiting in long lines at the shipping center. But we who mail things from a North Coast post office have three lovely choices.
There’s rarely a line at two of them.

We frequently ship from the tiny Harmony post office in the middle of the block-long downtown area. Officer in Charge Tracie Fischer keeps the office open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

But if we’re heading north for any reason, we’ll stop in to see Postmaster Kathy Wilson at Old San Simeon Village’s post office, on the northernmost edge of historic Sebastian’s General Store. The store’s still closed for remodeling, but the post office keeps chugging along, and is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

It’s such a warm, fuzzy thought: We can send our packages without wasting three hours standing in line, and our annual shipping charges could help convince postal authorities to keep the tiny rural branches open.

Back at Chaos Central, the still-unwrapped dragon and the snake are on guard duty over there.

And I’ll swear the stack has 10 more gifts on it that I’ve never seen before. Where’d that plastic angel come from?

But for tonight, it’s a wrap, no matter how you define it.

And, by the way, Merry Christmas!

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com. Read more "Slices" online at www.sanluisobispo.com.

BEST OF: Silly season clean-up

2007-12-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

When I get to the stage where I really enjoy seeing a used-car commercial on TV, then the election “silly” season has been too long.

From the nearly universal grousing I’m hearing from the electorate, I assume I’m not alone in being fed up.

Now, I’m a dedicated voter. I’ve never missed an election since I was old enough to cast ballots (back in the dark ages when we voted with quill and ink, no doubt).

Yes, I have my preferences. I can be as passionate about given causes as anybody else. But I don’t need 18 months to make my decisions, especially when so much of that time is dominated by hammer-and-tongs charges, counter charges and enough “spin” to make the earth start turning backwards.

This pre-voting process is a circus, and I leave it to you who I think the clowns are.

It’s the unintended consequences of all this that worry me the most. Sure, some voters will get disgusted with this candidate or that ballot measure, and that’s fine. But some people — especially the thousands of recently registered first-time voters — will be so revolted by the election season’s endurance mud bath that they’ll give up on the whole process.

That’s not fine. In fact, it’s not acceptable.

I want to tell the candidates “don’t tell me what’s wrong with your opponents. I’m not dumb. I can figure that out for myself. Just tell me what’s right with you and what you can do that nobody else can or will do.”

Faced with another weekend of non-stop political negativity, we tuned out. Rather than spending our time listening to and reading about the latest week-before-the-vote polls, interviews and ads, we chose one of the optional evils.

We decided we’d really rather spend our Saturday-Sunday doing a once-in-10-years cleaning of our jammed-to-the-rafters, two-story, 40-foot-by-22-foot storage garage. Really we did.

The garage is a big gray building my parents built in 1974 to house their fifth-wheel trailer, the truck it came in on and all the things Mom and Dad wanted to store. Some 30 years later, youngest son Sean decided it was time we relieved ourselves of a lot of “barn stuff.” In the process, we wound up creating minor circus of our own.

In mid-cleanup Saturday, we were faced with a VW-bug-sized stack of pure, unadulterated trash, and a Lincoln Navigator-sized heap of things too good to toss but not good enough to keep and store any more.

The thought of giving a garage sale sounded worse than watching the political news coverage. So, some of it went to Achievement House … on Monday.

In the meantime, the stuff was stacked, piled and tossed in front of the house, and looked absolutely awful.

Caught between a chaotic rock and the decidedly hard place of dragging everything back into the barn for the night and back out again to load into the truck, I grabbed a piece of scrap wood and began lettering.

“If you want it, take it NOW! FREE! The truck will haul it away on Monday.”

In garage-sale-happy Cambria, I’m sure your imagination fills in the blanks of what happened next.

Until dark on that day and dawn-to-dusk on Sunday, most people walking or driving past stopped and picked up a couple of things, at least. Some returned with a bigger vehicle, or with friends. Others said something to the effect of “Sam sent me.”

Several curious Georges peered into the barn, saying, “I’ve always wondered what was in here.” Many wanted to know if we were moving, and if not, then what in tarnation were we doing.

We were amused and amazed by the array of stuff that people seemed so overjoyed to take home …. including fishing lures, doors, rusty tools, a hippie-style crocheted top, an inner tube, a small inflatable boat that just passed the quarter-century mark and 25 pairs of my late mother’s 1970s-era Beachcomber Bills flip-flops (which went to children in Nicaragua, we understand.)

By Sunday night, we were stiff, sore, grubby, grateful for all the help and euphoric over the weekend’s work.

And one of the best parts? We had absolutely no idea what the candidates and pundits had said about the election during the entire weekend.

This column ran Oct. 28, 2004, in The Cambrian. Since then, another political season has gotten into full swing, and with the return of our middle son to the household, we’ve managed to fill up the barn again. Sigh.

You can go home again

2007-11-28T16:52:00.000-08:00

We’re delighted to have son Brian back in Cambria where he grew up. It’s wonderful to have the third voice in the house, along with his laugh, strong back, willing heart and so much more.

And thanks to so many of you for asking how the move in has worked out.

We’ve survived but, no, we’re not finished. At this rate, everything should be where it’s supposed to be by 2015. If we’re lucky.

When you add another person to a household that’s been established for decades — even if he lived in the house before — a couple of things happen.

First, there’s the physical act of bringing his belongings into the household.

It’s been 12 years since husband Richard and I moved into the sparsely decorated abode we built after a fire destroyed the family home. Since then, our feeble attempt at living as minimalists has been firmly buried under all that … um … stuff.

Our entire house, “barn” and shed were crammed full long before we began rearranging one bedroom to make space for Brian’s belongings.

It’s an immutable, Einstein-esque law: Everything has to go someplace. Even when you run out of available someplaces.

Make a game out of it, Kathe. To play “Home-decorating Dominos,” move Item A (probably into a box in a storage area) so you can put Item B into the space formerly occupied by Item A.

Simple sounding, yes. But, since each space already was full, nearly every item switch took us all the way to items F or G. Some moves required the entire alphabet and then some.

By the time we found new homes for, say, 38,592 items, we had permanent backaches, crossed eyes and a total lack of recall about what wound up where.

For instance, I know the sewing machine is now on a desk in my office/guest room, because I can see it. But the box of patterns? The basket of mending? The lidded tub full of fabric? Oh, mercy, I haven’t a clue.

They’re probably in the barn. Somewhere. Sigh.

Beyond the physical readjustments, each of us also is dealing with some wildly fluctuating emotions.

Elation about our reunited family. Angst about making the arrangement work long term. Even an occasional twinge of depression, which often accompanies any drastic change.

Brian, of course, has had physical and emotional stress times two, because he moved out of his old place, lifestyle and job and must adapt to the new ones. He left a host of friends (and free rounds of golf) there to further his career as a chef here, while reconnecting with Cambria buddies and forming new bonds at work.

Psychologist friends tell us those normal emotion swings will fade as old routines are replaced by the new ones.

And there sure have been a lot of the latter.

For instance, we no longer have a guest room, just a Murphy bed in my office. So when a large group arrives for a visit — as happened a week or so after the move-in — a lot of people wind up sleeping on couches.

Imagine a three-night slumber party in a living room paved with four girls from kindergarten to preteen. Or when they hijacked Uncle Brian’s television remote so he’d have to watch “High School Musical” with them in his room ... instead of football.

It was chaotic, high-spirited fun.

Bingo. When husband Richard and I lived alone in the house, it was quiet, mostly tidy (yeah, sure), usually predicable.

I’ll stop short of calling our lifestyle dull because, as a reporter, my life is filled with the unexpected.

But now, the house and our lives are vibrating with variety, hilarity and the unexpected. We all catch up with each other at breakfast or dinnertime. Our excited chatter zooms around the table like the hummingbirds jostling each other at the feeders outside the windows.

Of course, the changes have been hectic and exhausting. We still have a lot of adjustments to make, rearranging and unpacking to do, and keep-don’t keep decisions ahead.

There’s a garage sale to follow, no doubt.

But once again, we’ve learned that family makes a house a home.

And that, yes, you can go home again.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Thankful for politicians (most of them)

2007-11-21T04:37:00.000-08:00

On a day set aside for counting our blessings, it can be a stretch to include being thankful for politicians.

For most of us, gratitude is rightfully reserved for those who love us, like us, save our lives or our money, entertain us, keep us safe or fix our plumbing when it overflows at midnight.

The only people apt to be overtly thankful for politicians are those who are indebted to or courting the commissioners, supervisors, senators and governors of life. The rest of us are more likely to samba with an alligator.

The emotional distance between the camps is no surprise. By job descriptions and basic inclinations, most politicians aren’t warm, fuzzy, cuddly types, no matter how much baby kissing they do — although when you consider changed connotations for the political phrase “pressing the flesh,” maybe some politicos have been a little cuddlier than they ought to be.

And it’s tough warming up to people who must cut our services and benefits while searching for new ways to wheedle more money out of each wallet.

But maybe we ought to say “thank you” anyway.

Put yourself in their shoes. Would you be willing to put up with all the dreck that goes along with the titles? Uh huh, me neither.

Most political jobs fall into the “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it” category. Somebody’s got to serve or our system of government could collapse.

“Of, for and by the people” means some of us have to be willing to step up and sign up.

As some have said about being a candidate for, say, the Cambria Community Services District, “You have to be smart enough to do the job and dumb enough to take it.”

For good, honest, hard-working politicians (which covers a lot of them, I have to believe), being in office must be a little like being in the military. You sign on for two or four years to work with or for people who often don’t like you much and some of whom may be inclined to shoot at you.

Oh, there are perks to elected offices and appointed jobs. Some politicos are treated to exotic meals, elite functions, junkets and special tours of exclusive places.

And the word “power” comes to mind. But for members of smaller or more obscure commissions and councils, such influence is ephemeral at best, imagined or nonexistent for most.

Some upper-tier political jobs pay pretty well, but to get them, you have live in Sacramento, Washington D.C. or other charming garden spots. City council-folks and county supervisors get a nice salary, but most other government leaders on a local level are paid a pittance or nothing.

Said Cambria services district directors, for instance, are paid $100 per meeting, with a maximum of six meetings per month.

And, as a reward, most politicians spend most of their “personal time” studying agendas and staff reports, going to extra-curricular evening and weekend meetings or functions on the creamed-chicken-and-peas circuit, listening to people kvetch or answering phone calls at midnight from irate constituents who want them to fix something — now.

There are lots of long days, thankless tasks and being nice to people who aren’t.

And the process of getting a job you probably won’t get to keep can be costly, egregious and occasionally painful.

So, one wonders why those good, honest folks are willing to put aside their lives and run for office at all, let alone spend their own money to battle for the right to win those elections or get those appointments.

Yeah, there are some politicos I’d love to introduce to the toe of my pointiest cowboy boot.

To all the others on this home-family-and-hearth holiday, I say, “Thanks for being there.”

This column ran first in The Cambrian on Nov. 27, 2003.

Iron & sparks in DNA

2007-11-15T03:48:00.000-08:00

This holiday season, more than ever, we find ourselves immersed in the blessings of being close to family.

Eight days after Halloween, my Aunt Kate arrived from North Carolina for a week to help me celebrate my birthday. Our youngest son and his family will be here for Thanksgiving. We’ll split Christmas between them and his ex. And our eldest son and his wife will visit from Reno for New Year’s Eve and our 30th wedding anniversary Jan. 2.

In the midst of all that, our middle son has moved back home to start a new and exciting job in Cambria.

The latter, of course, means massive renovation in our back bedroom. Where to put winter coats now? Is there room somewhere for my sewing machine? And the Christmas gifts I haven’t wrapped yet (which is nearly all of them)? Arrgh.

Frenzy doesn’t begin to describe it.

But what a perfect season for it, because it’s all about family.

Husband Richard has nine siblings and enough other relatives to fill a metropolitan phone book. I, on the other hand, have few blood relatives, especially on my mother’s side. I cherish every one of them, if for no other reason than they’re … um … individualistic.

I get to share ancestral DNA with strong-willed, offbeat women who purposefully crafted the lives they wanted and needed.

My ancestor, British Major Gen. Robert Sedgwick, arrived in 1621 to the land that would later become the United States. The family established one of the first ironworks foundries in the Massachusetts colony.

When one of my great-great grandmas left home, she was the only young, unmarried woman on the wagon train heading west. She had a wonderful, somewhat X-rated time, thank you, as documented in her diary that’s kept under lock and key by a circumspect historical society.

Indiana (yes, that was her name) was the first white female teacher west of the Rocky Mountains. She married Richard Sopris, the first elected representative to Congress from the Jefferson Territory (Colorado) and later, mayor of Denver and parks commissioner.

Their daughter (my great-grandmother) Elizabeth Sopris Brown studied surveying and astronomy during the Victorian era, when few colleges even accepted women students.
Her daughter, Katharine "Kitty" Inglis Suydam, was the most conventional twig on my family tree. Even so, she took flying lessons in 1922.

Of course, my primary role model in eccentricity was my mom, Andy, who was strong-willed enough to ditch a name she hated (Betsy) and legally rename herself Andrew to honor the grandfather she adored.

When Mom was 16, her widowed mother married a man who Andy didn’t like much and with whom she didn’t want to live. She left home, moved to Greenwich Village and became a jazz critic.

Mom toured nationwide on a bus as a publicist with the Chico Marx Band, then met and married my father, a great jazz musician but an erratic, alcoholic husband. They divorced when I was five.

Mom made another life for herself and me, working at everything from selling freezers to writing and performing commercials and radio shows. That was in a time and place where divorcing just wasn’t done, the woman of the house stayed home to tend house and kids, and you were judged by how much money and status the man of the house had. Fit in? Guess again.

When I was 13, Mom, Kate and I were on a cross-country vacation when my unusual mother met my equally unconventional stepdad, a lifelong bachelor and resort chef. They fell in love and married 10 days later. No, that’s not a typo: 10 days.

About 17 years later, he died suddenly. Mom dealt with her grief in a motorhome, touring the U.S. alone for several months, revisiting places they had been during their all-too-brief life together (I had been in 13 high schools in three years.).

Is it any wonder I’m a genuine kook? It’s all in those blessed genes, the elusive DNA links we celebrate so enthusiastically every Thanksgiving, and all year long.

Thanks, ladies, for giving me such an unusually strong heritage. May I carry on and always make you proud.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Nutcracker redux

2007-11-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

Imagine 9-year-old and a 79-year-old celebrating their birthdays together by seeing a ballet on stage, each for the very first time.

Husband Richard’s birthday is the week before Christmas. Our granddaughter Caitlyn’s birthday is in September. Last year, she told us that rather than getting toys or trinkets for her ninth birthday, she’d much rather see “The Nutcracker” as her birthday gift.

We suspected more than a little parental influence in her decision, but Cait was obviously delighted by the prospect of seeing the dance in person, so we were pleased to comply.

She lives with her mom and sister in a small town northeast of Sacramento. So the obvious, easy solution would have been to take Grandpa and his girl to see the ballet corps in the state’s capital.

Tanners never do easy.

Instead, we decided to host Cait for a holiday weekend in San Francisco and take her to an all-new production of the famed dance at the San Francisco Ballet.

If we could get tickets. Big if.

By a fluke of timing, Richard and I were in The City on the day tickets went on sale. We’d heard it’s always a mob scene, so to make sure we snagged good seats, we headed out early that morning to stand in line at the Opera House.

We arrived about an hour before ticket sales began and were startled when there was no line of potential buyers.

Maybe they forgot? Not likely. Hmmmm.

We studied the lovely old building until a kindly soul opened up the front doors and let us in, about 15 minutes before ticket sales were to begin.

Then we saw it — a sign at the ticket window itself (which we hadn’t been able to see from outside) informing us that all sales would be by phone or over the Internet, and the ballet office itself wouldn’t open for another month.

Well, phoo. So that’s why nobody else was there. They obviously knew. We didn’t. Once again, I felt like the outsider dummy kid at the new school.

And we still had to get tickets, somehow. We’d promised.

Unfortunately, time was racing by and my cell phone wasn’t working well (the downtown buildings are too high and block reception, I guess. It’s almost as bad as trying to call from Cambria!)

Every time I actually got past the busy signal to the ballet-ticket order line itself, the signal would fade and I’d get disconnected.

It was 10:30, and I know those gusty winds I felt were from all the good tickets flying out to all those other people who’d known we couldn’t buy them at the window.

Our options were running out. There are no pay phones any more (casualty of all those cell phones that don’t work). It would have taken us another half hour to get to the hotel for internet sales.

By then, if we could have gotten tickets at all, I was sure we’d have been banished to the hall’s cheap seats, up in the cashew gallery (even further up than the peanut gallery).

Finally and desperately, I called a dear friend at work, begging and pleading. Bless her soul, Linda took time on a hugely busy morning and snagged us seats in the front row of the first balcony. Whew!

On ballet day, a beside-herself-with-excitement Cait dolled up in velvet and chiffon headed for the Opera House. As we all walked through the doors, a light sprinkling of man-made snow drifted down in wisps at the doorway. Magic!

Helgi Tomasson’s newly revised production of “The Nutcracker Suite” had fresh choreography, costumes of unusual colors and stage sets depicting San Francisco’s “Painted Ladies” Victorian houses, rather than London.

Cait was enchanted by the swirling dance, the costumes and the joy of watching it all through a tiny pair of opera glasses. Most of all, she loved a charming young Clara, who captured hearts and wove magic spells. For those few moments, children in the audience could imagine they were just like her.

Richard marveled at the athletic feats, the huge talents and the beauty of the ballet. “Don’t they understand the concept of gravity?” he mused.

And there were extra benefits for a nearly deaf hearing-aid wearer who quickly figured out the music-only language of ballet. With a big grin, he said, “I certainly know the melodies already, and I didn’t have to strain to hear the dialogue.”

What a joy it was to provide such memories for birthday gifts that needed no shiny box or big bows.

There’s only one downside — how will we top it this year?

This column ran in The Cambrian on Nov. 10, 2005. Continuing the tradition, we'll take Caitlyn, younger sister Alyssa and their mom to see the same ballet in December. It will be a first-time treat for Lyssie, too.

Time and time again, doggone it

2007-11-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

It was about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 27, and I was still huddled under my quilt, because it was so dark and chilly … and Elvis had stopped wiggling.

It must be time to change time again, a task which rates right up there with cleaning toilets, filing for unemployment or having a tax audit.

Staying in bed sounds better and better.

In past years, you see, we’d already have gone through this agony by now. We’d be on standard time and the sun would be up by 6:30. This year, the time change won’t kick in until 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4.

To prepare, we’ll twist those stem-winders and button-push on every clock and coffeemaker, microwave, telephone and thermometer, printer and pocket watch in the house.

It could be worse. We could be on 24-hour military time … or each of our clocks could have calendar mechanisms. If either of those describes your household, I hope you weren’t planning to do anything else this weekend.

But back to Elvis.

We have a campy Presley clock, a gag gift that’s supposed to shake its booty 24/7. Twice a year and regular as clockwork, so to speak, the King keeps on ticking but his hip-shimmy mechanism quits.

I suppose dust mice, lint fragments and an occasional deceased spider clog the rock star’s wiggle-works. So, once again I’ll beg Jay Foreman at Once Upon a Tyme to give Elvis the clock-equivalent of a colonic.

Searching for a time-changing short-cut recently, I bought two self-setting atomic clocks. They’re linked via radio waves and voodoo to a Big Daddy that keeps them marching in clock-lockstep from Colorado, about 1,200 miles away.

I went online and learned that millions of devices worldwide are regulated from afar by a system of four ultra-precise, control-freak Master Clocks. How bizarre.

According to http://science.howstuffworks.com/atomic-clock.htm, atomic clocks are super accurate. “Without atomic clocks, GPS navigation would be impossible, the Internet would not synchronize and the position of the planets would not be known with enough accuracy for space probes and landers to be launched and monitored.”

So how do my little clocks work, you ask?

HowStuffWorks explains in part, “oscillation frequencies within the atom are determined by the mass of the nucleus and the gravity and electrostatic ‘spring’ between the positive charge on the nucleus and the electron cloud surrounding it.”

Got that? Great. Now explain it to me. In English, please.

But if the Jedi Master clock remotely tells all our little clocks exactly what time it really is … then why, on Oct. 27, did the atomic clock in our living room read 8:57 while the one in the dining room said it was 8:54?

Is one of them a black sheep that merrily clocks away to an alternate rhythm, perhaps in rumba time? Great. Just what I need, an inaccurate atomic clock that’s ready to debut on “Dancing With the Stars.”

I rationalized that maybe our atomics were on the same wavelength, but I was slow. I dashed back and forth between the two rooms, trying to catch both clocks with the same time.

Didn’t happen, but I wound up feeling like the spying mother of quarrelsome twin teenagers.

Then on Oct. 28 — the Sunday on which we would have “fallen back” if this had been 2006 — I arose to find the dining room atomic clock correctly on daylight time … but the living room atomic clock had somehow reset itself to standard time. A week early.

Totally confused, I went back online.

The notably unreliable Wikipedia.com, said in part, “typical radio ‘atomic clocks’ require placement in a location with a relatively unobstructed atmospheric path to the transmitter.”

This is Cambria, Wiki. Nothing has a relatively unobstructed path to anything here.

So, Tanner Manor now has self-setting clocks which work (or don’t) in the same manner that all Cambria cell phones do (or don’t).

I give up. I’m going back to bed. Elvis can meditate all he wants. The atomics can disagree. And I don’t even care what time it is.

BEST OF: After a fire

2007-10-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

A longer version of this column first ran in a special section in the San Luis Obispo Telegram Tribune in July, 1994, following the Highway 41 fire and three months after Kathe and Richard Tanner's home burned to the ground.

An open letter to fire victims from someone who’s been there

Our hearts go out to you. We do know what you're going through — our home burned down several years ago. That single-house incident didn't have the magnitude of the inferno that wiped out your home or business, but we did have our own little firestorm with high winds, fast-moving flames and backdrafts. It's terrifying, and the anguish is something you really can't explain to someone who hasn't been there.

If these tidbits of information we learned after our fire can ease your situation a little, that's all we ask.

1. Rely on others during this time of adjustment. Now is not the time to be independent. After our fire, we learned that people really wanted to be helpful, giving and supportive. We wound up accepting kindnesses from folks we didn't even know then, but do now. We were, and still are, very grateful for their help.

And it’s OK if you don’t want to be around someone’s candles, campfire, barbecue pit or fireplace. We still don’t.

2. Don't give up too easily or too soon — keep looking through what's left, even though it can be terribly painful. There may be some amazing things buried in those ashes.

We found remains of sculptures my mother did, a little sapphire pendant my husband gave me on our first Christmas together, undamaged photos, some antique silver that was my great grandmother's — absolutely astonishing finds.

And cherish the bizarre and humorous: The fire reduced our furniture to a pile of charcoal and ash. However, in what had been one drawer, we found a pristine bag of absolutely dreadful gag gifts and a cellophane sack of rubber balloons. Go figure.

3. Don't assume the remains of things will be right where you left them. We found items 100 feet away from where they'd been before the fire, blown there perhaps by the exploding fire, or maybe by the force of the water from the fire hoses.

4. If something you retrieved from the ashes is intact but absolutely nasty looking because it's coated with hard-caked soot and gook and grime, don't despair. We'd gone through literally hundreds of dollars worth of specialty cleaners, scrubbers, cleansers and soaking liquids before we discovered that a simple engine cleaner from the auto parts store worked best of all for us. You can soak things in it straight from the bottle, or dilute it a bit to scrub with. It’s not toxic. It removes the gunk on hard-surfaced items (but won't work on fabric). Wear gloves only because it will dry out your hands.

We used Super Clean to retrieve dozens of items encased in glop, including a set of ruby-flashed, cut-crystal highball glasses that belonged to my great grandmother.

5. The sheer magnitude of trying to remember everything you had in your home is enough to make anybody want to play Rip Van Winkle for a few years, no matter how helpful your insurance agent, adjuster and other official types are. But hang in there. It's worth it.

6. Before listing the entire contents of your house — including every pair of shoes and each paring knife — call anyone to whom you might have sent photographs of family gatherings in your home. Birthdays, holidays, graduations, even pictures you took because Cousin Willie looked so dumb sound asleep upside down on the sofa.

Say what you will about the photo, it proves you had a sofa and what it looked like. Other things in the photo will jog your memory.

Compile the pictures, make color photocopies for the insurance company and then start getting your list down on paper.

7. Talking to an agent in another office helped. He was totally uninvolved, extremely nice and deciphered several things in the policy that just didn't make sense, because they didn't seem to be in English.

8. Insurance companies sell you “contents replacement value,” and charge you extra for it. After the fire, they'll give you the depreciated value of each item you had after your list is approved, but only pay you the rest once you've bought your replacements.

9. Replacement value on the house itself means they give you actual cash value (their calculations, not yours) for the house at the beginning of construction, then pay the balance at the end of the reconstruction.

10. Rather quickly, the insurance company paid us for immediate living expenses, then gave us an advance on our contents insurance. First, we bought another set of underwear (drying a bra with a hairdryer is useless) and jackets so we wouldn’t freeze at night. The next check we received, quite a while later, was reimbursement for things we had on separate insurance riders.

11. Take your time. Keep your options open. Don’t let people rush you. If you set your mind to it, the search through the ashes can be a treasure hunt and plans for rebuilding are a new beginning. But getting to that point emotionally can take time.

12. If you have willing, helpful listeners in your immediate support team, you're in good shape. We had wonderful friends, including a former co-worker who’d gone through the same thing four months earlier. His advice and love were invaluable.

If you're short on listeners, find a trauma support group and go to the meetings. Let out your anger, hurt and frustration or they will make you sick, literally. And, if you need us, call. We're in the book.

Less planning, more fun

2007-10-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

It was a glorious fall day, warm, sunny and with only enough clouds in the sky to provide a lovely photographic backdrop. I was restless and determined to do something about it. When husband Richard staggered out about 7 a.m., groping for his first cup of coffee, I allowed him a sip or two, then asked him pointedly, “Wanna go somewhere?”

After looking startled for a moment, he realized what I meant, and with eyes twinkling, he quickly said, “Sure!”

Less than two hours later (including taking showers and eating a quick breakfast), we were on the road. Two hours!

Those who know how we usually agonize about packing and preparing the house will realize that’s a land-speed record. Our usual pre-travel process can take hours and hours, if not substantial chunks of several preceding days.

What to wear? Does the weather forecast there call for rain or wind or snow? Should we fix breakfast in the hotel (requiring supplies) or eat out? What are we going to do when we get wherever it is we’re going, and do we need to take anything special to do so?

All that deciding and then packing the selections can be so tiring and stressful, it takes some of the fun out of travel.

That’s frustrating, because there’s something special about just … going.

Saying, “I want to go somewhere,” and then going. Tossing everything you need into a backpack, locking the door and taking off for points unknown about 15 minutes after the decision was made.

That’s the essence of freedom, of youth and being happy and carefree.

We wanted that back. So, like an aging Peter Pan and Wendy, we went.

And for the first time in a long time, our travel felt spontaneous.

It really isn’t about the destination, you know. It truly is about getting there … together.

No phone (unless I turn the cell phone on). No computer. No chores. Nothing but the two of us. It’s such a gift.

Sure, sometimes we talk about serious stuff — health, the kids, global warming, the future.
Or we can choose to be quiet, or listen to music.

Sometimes, our chatter borders on nonsense. For instance, we saw a big, long, deluxe fifth-wheel RV being pulled by a commercial truck, the kind that would normally be hauling substantial cargo of some kind.

They didn’t seem to match.

Was the driver on vacation? If so, why use that kind of truck?

Hmmmm. Maybe he was delivering the RV. Maybe he was a retired truck driver who only felt comfortable in that kind of vehicle, or a chauffeur driving somebody important.

We spent about 20 minutes trying to solve the puzzle before acknowledging that we’d never know the answer, unless we and the rig stopped at the same time and place, and we got bold enough to ask (you bet I’d do it!).

But it was fun wondering.

In talking about our trip on the way home, we figured out some reasons why husband Richard so looks forward to traveling (me, too, of course):

• Now that I’m the primary driver, he’s forced to rest. But, finally, after all those years at the wheel, he can finally sightsee for himself. He loves to give me a running commentary about what he’s seeing.

• I’m his captive audience … with a steering wheel in my hand and a road to watch, yes, but with nothing else competing for my attention but traffic.

• When we chat in a car, my hearing-aid-wearing honey usually can hear me.

Back home again at the end of our 36-hour vacationette, we were tuckered out. After all, we’d gone about 600 miles in two days. And we’d had lots of activity in the middle.

But amazingly enough, travel felt young again. Our drop-of-the-hat, mini-trip had been a huge success. It hadn’t really mattered where we were going. We were together, just the two of us. Going someplace different.

Whee! Let’s do it again!

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com. Read more “Slices” online at www.sanluisobispo.com.

BEST OF: Short-sheeted ghost story

2007-10-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

He lurched through the house, totally enveloped in white, encircled by a twisting, turning being that was devouring him, inch by painful inch.

In a panic, the terrified man fought to free himself from the evil, to contain the monster. But it was no use. There was no safe haven, no protected corner in which to hide.

A nightmare? A horror movie? A Stephen King novel?

No, no. Nothing that dramatic. It was just my valiant husband, Richard, trying one more time to fold a fitted sheet for a king-sized bed.

Hide in a corner? He can't even find the corners, let alone hide in one of them.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. Heavens no. At least I'm blessed with a husband who'll try to fold the sheet, instead of automatically assuming such a task is women's work.

We've been married a long time now, so his sheet-wrestling matches don't startle me anymore.

But now that I'm doing most of my work for The Cambrian from my home office, we have declared his faux-folding high-jinks off-limits during business hours, just in case I happen to be interviewing an unsuspecting someone here.

I do try to be empathetic to my husband's predicament. But, try as I might, I still don't understand the problem. I'm not one to boast, mind you, but I can take a fitted sheet and, in mere moments, fit it into a neat-and-tidy rectangle that would slide back in its original package with room to spare -- if I hadn't had to shred the original package to get the sheet out in the first place.

And tidy? When I fold a fitted sheet, the edges are even, the corners are flat and so is the sheet.

Please, no applause. I embarrass easily.

Besides, it's not perfect. You can't bounce a quarter off my folded sheet.

I couldn't even make that trick work when I was a motel maid, and the quarter-test was the final measure of a well-made bed. Now, when I go to a hotel and climb into a bed made up that snugly, all I can think of is that nasty motel supervisor (a true Sergeant Major if I ever saw one) when his coin landed on my freshly made bed and didn't bounce right back up.

I'll bet he can't fold fitted sheets, either.

My poor, sweet husband tries so hard. He looks at my tiny, tidy, package of sheet. He sets his shoulders, then works and wrestles and fights ... and winds up with a questionable art form that looks like William Calder fought Quasimodo's ghost, and both lost.

When he asks for help, I've showed him how I do it.

"Fold the sheet in half, and lay it on a bed. Then tuck the corners tightly into each other. Do it again, folding the sheet into quarters, with three corners tucked into the fourth. Fold the edge with the corners on it to the middle, fold up the other edge and..."

By then, I've looked up and realized that I've lost him somewhere in the neighborhood of corner tucking (which, by the way, sounds vaguely racy).

Now, this is not a dumb man. When he worked for Harrah's Club as a pit boss, he could watch 24 tables, chat up the high rollers, take over and deal a game ... all at the same time, and never miss a beat.

As our head baker at The Upper Crust, he'd watch four ovens, three mixers, 25 employees, a roomful of customers and still have enough gray matter available to remember that the chocolate custard was ready to refrigerate, the choux paste was ready to cook and the van's tires needed to be rotated.

These days, my "retired" honey reads three newspapers every day in search of items The Cambrian might need. He cuts gorgeous opals from the ugliest rocks you ever saw. He is the Tanners' CFO. And he's a backstop photographer for the newspapers, having had years more experience with a camera than I have.

So, what's with the fitted sheet? Is it in his DNA, a regressive folding gene? Is it a mental block? Is he too tall to do it?

Or are all men defeated by large pieces of material with elastic in the corners? Is this a guy thing?

Until he figures it out, I'll keep giving him comfort and reassurance, and then I'll go and refold the sheets myself. Hey, I have to sleep in that bed, too. It's not very restful when it's 60-by-80 inches of crinkled, wrinkled, fold-ridden cloth. It's sort of like trying to catch 40 winks in a crisp origami project.

So, we'll give husband Richard credit for trying, time after time after time. And I promise, I'll try not to laugh when he lurches into the kitchen, wrapped in yet another sheet that's defeated him, crying, "get me oooouuuuuuuuuuuut of here!"

But there could be another silver lining to this. Maybe I'll just rent him out for Halloween.

This column ran in The Cambrian in October, 2002. That year, after submitting this and two other columns, I won a California Newspaper Publishers Association award as columnist of the year for weekly newspapers with circulation under 4,500 a week.

Results of canine cupids, 30 years later

2007-10-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Love in this branch of the Tanner family means going to the dogs.

On Monday, Oct. 8, husband Richard and I will celebrate the 30th anniversary of our first date.

We never should have met, you know. The odds were against us. I was a 33-year-old divorcee with two children living in Cambria. He was 18 years older, a widower in Reno.

Coincidences, a newspaper and five Shetland sheepdogs intervened.

Earlier in the summer of 1977, my two sons and I were on a weekend trip to Santa Barbara with my mom. As was her habit on arrival, Mom bought and read the local paper cover to cover.
This time, she held out an ad in the classified section. "Free to you, two Shetland sheepdogs," said the life-changing ad.

I had wanted Shelties since I was a little girl in New York, and Mom knew it.

So, sons Brian, Sean and I adopted the two previously abandoned dogs, naming them Bonnie and Bambi.

Then the boys wanted to know more about Shelties, and so did I. Catch-as-catch-can canine research done on our next vacation eventually led me to Richard in Reno. Really it did. (We tease each other that it took five Shelties, 429 miles and 27 phone calls for us to find each other!)

While stuck in a phone booth at 98 degrees, my marathon research call to the Reno American Kennel Club produced a referral to the collie club, for some odd reason. That person sent me to Richard, who had three Shelties and lots of experience with them.

Early the next morning, before all of us left for Cambria, Richard and I talked about dogs for an hour or so, despite his having just ended a graveyard shift as a Harrah’s Club pit boss. During our conversation, Richard took a stab at mapping Bonnie and Bambi’s heritage.

A few weeks later, I was able to confirm by mail that his hunches about the dogs’ ancestry were correct. Concurrently, he invited me by mail to a Bay Area dog show, where a national authority was to judge the Shetland sheepdog class.

Of course, I went. In the name of research. Yup.

Mom drove the motor home into Oakland, and headed for a nearby fire station to get directions to the show. (FYI: firemen, cops and medics are most apt to know exactly where a given building is and how to get there quickly.)

She and I didn’t know Richard was right behind us and had spotted our motor home.

I saw him when we both got out of our vehicles. Astonished, I gave him a hug and turned to get directions from the firemen. He swears that’s when he fell in love … "There I was on a clear day in Oakland, and I felt like I’d been struck by lightning." Such a romantic.

When my traffic-frantic Mom firmly announced she was getting out, out, out of the city, and would wait for me in Santa Cruz, Richard volunteered to drive me down there after dinner … in San Francisco!

He and I went to the dog show, then got trapped in the Columbus Day parade traffic in San Francisco. We had lunch in what turned out to be a gay deli in San Francisco (the menu listed "fresh canned fruit salad," so we’re not talking high cuisine).

We had dinner with two of his longtime friends who spent the evening trying to figure out how old I was. They were charming, but about as subtle as a mini-skirt on a gorilla.

We pulled into Santa Cruz way too late for him to drive back to The City, so he camped out in the motor home’s other bed. And whaddya know? He was on vacation, and he’d never been to Cambria. So it was both polite and natural to invite him down for a visit.

The rest is family history. You can never call Richard Tanner a slow mover.

Two days later, he proposed. Well, sort of. He said, "It may be next week or next year, but I’m going to marry you."

Three months later, he did just that.

In this case, going to the dogs was the perfect thing to do. Happy anniversary, darling Richard. Here’s to at least 30 more.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

Hydrophobia's new meaning: Fear of water use

2007-09-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Water, water everywhere … Are you feeling overwhelmed by watery problems? We are.

Where will Cambria get the extra water we all need? Will any of us be able to afford it?

How to use less of it so we don’t get clobbered by surcharges … and because conserving it is the right thing to do?

Not only is my work filled with stories about Cambria’s watery problems, so, it seems, is my life.

How long a shower can I afford this morning?

Is my ice-maker wasteful?

What about our water filtering system?

Should we turn our hot-water recirculating system off or leave it on? It supposedly uses less water when we try to get warmth out of the tap. But in the past, a couple of pipe seams have blown apart, and our plumber says that’s because of the constant heat and pressure in the pipes.

Of course, some water-conserving methods are no-brainers.

We leave our cars dirty or clean them at a car wash that recirculates the water.

We don’t wash down sidewalks or what little pavement we have.

We wash windows with a bucket and squeegee and save shower water in buckets for watering potted plants.

We avoid using the garbage disposal (maybe we’ll start donating our veggie waste to a neighbor’s composter).

We only wash full loads of anything.

We flush … oh, never mind.

Our house has a large yard (I won’t dignify it by calling it a garden) paved with African daisies that are, quite frankly, looking scruffy. We have a basic drip-irrigation system, but we use it rarely. Some plants have died from lack of water and attention.

So be it.

But when I start obsessing about other people wasting water in other towns, then I figure I’ve gone over the edge.

Recently in San Francisco, I saw a woman turn on the faucet in a public restroom, and then she left it running while she wandered away to get her child.

I almost went ballistic.

That said, mastering the art of water conserving in a public restroom is … tricky.

To prevent illness, public health folks urge us to wash our hands frequently, thoroughly. They say that, when we’re done, we must dry our hands, rather than using a blower which can recirculate germs, but we shouldn’t touch handles or buttons that others have touched.

Awkward, isn’t it?

I finally figured it out.

First, I pull off two sets of paper towels, and stick one under each armpit (probably not sanitary, but at least the germs there are MY germs. And fortunately, I’m fully clothed, because this is in public, right?).

At the sink, I turn on the water, dampen my hands and turn the water off.

I soap and lather my hands, silently singing the "Happy Birthday to me" song twice to make sure I’ve washed long enough. I take one paper towel from under my arm, use it to turn on the water long enough to rinse my hands and to turn off the water. I throw that towel away.

I use the other towel to dry my hands and open the restroom door, after which I fling the paper into a nearby (we hope) trash can.

Paper basketball is not my strong suit, so sometimes the plan falls apart there.

Of course, there are other problems … when blowers are the only hand-drying option, other than the slacks covering my own rump … when the restroom only has those awful, germ-filled cloth towels that go ‘round and ‘round in a metal container on the wall … when the paper-towel dispenser is empty.

And then there are the soap dispensers. I wish manufacturers would get together and decide where the soap is supposed to come out, in front or near the wall.

Unless I bend over and peer under the dispenser, I don’t know where to put my hand to catch the soap. And if I make the wrong choice, I wind up with soap on the floor or the sink … goo I have to clean up before I leave, which means I have to start over again because my hands aren’t clean any more.

Grrr.

The Purell and Handi-Wipes in my purse and car are looking better and better — and they don’t require water.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: You have to Pik your spot

2007-09-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

This column ran in The Cambrian on Aug. 18, 2005.

Our dentist maintains if we're dedicated about using our “dental irrigator,” we might keep our teeth a little longer.

(Did you ever notice that medical types always spout cryptic equations like that? For instance, my doctor tells me if I exercise more, I'll live longer. So, check this with me: By exercising for weeks and months now, when I feel relatively good, I might add more hours to the end of my life when I'm feeling crummy. I'm bad at math, but there's something wacky about those calculations.)

Anyhow, if a dental irrigator sounds like I'm hooking my mouth up to a power washer, you're not too far off. Water blended with a bit of bleach flows from a plastic reservoir through a pump to a tube that has a spray nozzle on the end. The resulting strong stream of water should buff each tooth clean, massage your gums and blast every little leftover piece of spinach or Snickers bar from between your molars.

It's like trying to chew gum and gargle at the same time.

And have you tasted Clorox lately?

To learn how to use our dental irrigator — which we nicknamed “Pik” — I opened the manual. Now I know better than to do that, having learned the drill from having two computers, a laptop, a PDA (personal digital assistant, a hand-held computer gizmo), three cell phones and two digital cameras, none of which I've even begun to understand.

Of course, the manuals just make things worse. I can do basic things with the electronics — find an address, write a story, take a picture or make a call (if I'm in range, but that's another problem). But the exotic stuff? To me, a “Blackberry” still is something that that bites back if you try to pick it and eventually evolves into jam or a pie filling ... not a trendy pager/e-mail/web browser that fits in the palm of your hand.

Even my new $89 microwave is smarter than I am.

So there I was with Pik and absolutely no idea how to use it. I stood at the sink and pondered.

I have a tooth or two that already are somewhat annoyed with me. I'm supposed to take something that could launch a small satellite, put the device into my mouth and turn it on.

Riiiiight.

I looked up at my reflection in the mirror, and my face reminded me of that wonderful old ad for rectal thermometers. You remember — a darling baby with a horrified expression and the headline, “You're going to put that thermometer WHERE?”

I sighed and went back to where Pik's manual showed the little tip firmly planted in the handle. But the booklet never showed exactly how I was supposed to connect them.

After several tries — during which I chased the tip around the bathroom like a manic grasshopper playing handball — I finally figured out it was a pushme-pullme and got the diabolical devices connected.

The manual also shows a sliding bar that controls the water's velocity, but didn't explain that, when you slide the bar while Pik is pumping water into your mouth, the pressure changes instantly from tickle to sandblast. It's like getting acupuncture from the inside out.

The manual also forgot to mention how tightly or loosely I should keep my lips closed once I turned on the spray. In my usual mode, I learned the hard way.

Using Pik with my mouth sort of open, I managed to spray down the sink, the mirror, the shower, the tub, the windows and the flower basket in the next room.

With my mouth slammed shut (a position with which I'm basically unfamiliar anyway), I almost drowned.

Finally, I learned the half-and-half lip-pursing move that is the requisite balance between blast and glub. Some water has to dribble and drip out of your mouth as Pik is blasting more in. It is not a Kodak moment.

Having semi-mastered the routine, here's some advice:
1) Don't wear nice clothes while you're Pik-ing.
2) Don't try to talk, either.
3) Laughing can be purely hazardous.
4) Clorox water tastes like old socks.
5) Be careful where you aim. Do not, repeat, not point the super sprayer at the back of your throat, especially right after breakfast.
6) And don't bother with the manual.

BEST OF: You've got to pik your spot

2007-09-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

This column ran in The Cambrian on Aug. 18, 2005.

Our dentist maintains if we're dedicated about using our “dental irrigator,” we might keep our teeth a little longer.

(Did you ever notice that medical types always spout cryptic equations like that? For instance, my doctor tells me if I exercise more, I'll live longer. So, check this with me: By exercising for weeks and months now, when I feel relatively good, I might add more hours to the end of my life when I'm feeling crummy. I'm bad at math, but there's something wacky about those calculations.)

Anyhow, if a dental irrigator sounds like I'm hooking my mouth up to a power washer, you're not too far off.

Water blended with a bit of bleach flows from a plastic reservoir through a pump to a tube that has a spray nozzle on the end. The resulting strong stream of water should buff each tooth clean, massage your gums and blast every little leftover piece of spinach or Snickers bar from between your molars.

It's like trying to chew gum and gargle at the same time.

And have you tasted Clorox lately?

To learn how to use our dental irrigator — which we nicknamed “Pik” — I opened the manual.

Now I know better than to do that, having learned the drill from having two computers, a laptop, a PDA (personal digital assistant, a hand-held computer gizmo), three cell phones and two digital cameras, none of which I've even begun to understand.

Of course, the manuals just make things worse.

I can do basic things with the electronics — find an address, write a story, take a picture or make a call (if I'm in range, but that's another problem).

But the exotic stuff? To me, a “Blackberry” still is something that that bites back if you try to pick it and eventually evolves into jam or a pie filling ... not a trendy pager/e-mail/web browser that fits in the palm of your hand.

Even my new $89 microwave is smarter than I am.

So there I was with Pik and absolutely no idea how to use it.

I stood at the sink and pondered. I have a tooth or two that already are somewhat annoyed with me. I'm supposed to take something that could launch a small satellite, put the device into my mouth and turn it on.

Riiiiight.

I looked up at my reflection in the mirror, and my face reminded me of that wonderful old ad for rectal thermometers. You remember — a darling baby with a horrified expression and the headline, “You're going to put that thermometer WHERE?”

I sighed and went back to where Pik's manual showed the little tip firmly planted in the handle. But the booklet never showed exactly how I was supposed to connect them.

After several tries — during which I chased the tip around the bathroom like a manic grasshopper playing handball — I finally figured out it was a pushme-pullme and got the diabolical devices connected.

The manual also shows a sliding bar that controls the water's velocity, but didn't explain that, when you slide the bar while Pik is pumping water into your mouth, the pressure changes instantly from tickle to sandblast.

It's like getting acupuncture from the inside out.

The manual also forgot to mention how tightly or loosely I should keep my lips closed once I turned on the spray.

In my usual mode, I learned the hard way.

Using Pik with my mouth sort of open, I managed to spray down the sink, the mirror, the shower, the tub, the windows and the flower basket in the next room.

With my mouth slammed shut (a position with which I'm basically unfamiliar anyway), I almost drowned.

Finally, I learned the half-and-half lip-pursing move that is the requisite balance between blast and glub. Some water has to dribble and drip out of your mouth as Pik is blasting more in.

It is not a Kodak moment.

Having semi-mastered the routine, here's some advice:

1) Don't wear nice clothes while you're Pik-ing.
2) Don't try to talk, either.
3) Laughing can be purely hazardous.
4) Clorox water tastes like old socks.
5) Be careful where you aim. Do not, repeat, not point the super sprayer at the back of your throat, especially right after breakfast.
6) And don't bother with the manual.

BEST OF: "Stick to your ribs" has new meaning

2007-09-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

It’s a Friday afternoon. We’re tired from the long week, and we’ve shopped at the grocery stores and farmers market. We unload and put away all that food and then are too weary to fix and eat it.

It’s a familiar syndrome: “I just bought $200 worth of food, and there’s nothing to eat.”

Planning ahead on a recent Friday, we bought take-out from Linn’s barbecue booth and then ate our meal at the Cambria Community Cemetery.

It’s a peaceful, fairly private place in which to immerse ourselves in a delightfully gooey meal of glazed chicken and the sticky, saucy barbecued pork. (Get thee behind us, Satan — with a cardiologist-triggered guilty conscience, we took the leftovers home and froze them for another indulgence.)

Bless Handi Wipes.

As I mopped barbecue sauce off far-flung sections of my body (how did I get it on my ankle?), I wondered what makes sticky foods so special, so decadent.

Yum. Toffee apples and grilled cheese sandwiches, caramel-marshmallow sundaes and chocolate fondue, and yes, the barbecues of many nations. There’s even a highly celebrated breakfast roll called a sticky bun.

My teeth and hips may pay the tariff, but all that goo enriches my soul somehow. Must be a throwback to our cave-person days. Maybe fire-glazed mastodon was sticky, too.

Making gooey things at home has its hazards, as anyone who has ever fast-flipped a pan of fresh-out-of-the-oven sticky buns can attest.

While pastries, cakes and breads require some precision in measuring and following recipes, other sticky recipes often do not. Toss together a dab of this, a splash of that. If it’s not exactly as the recipe laid out, it’ll probably taste just fine anyway.

A few successes at such culinary improv can do wonders for a cook’s confidence. From there, it’s dangerously easy to jump over that fine line between capable and cocky.

The results of such self-assurance can join the ranks of other family food disasters, like Aunt Maude’s oven-forged pot roast or the too-liquid cake that boiled merrily in the oven, instead of baking.

At this stage in this report, the unkind in our family would nod knowingly and recall my infamous Chinese-style sticky ribs.

These lusciously sticky baby backs simmer in an ever-reducing sweet/salty liquid, rather than baking in an oven or being barbecued on a hot grill. The soy/sugar/chili flavor steeps into the meat during the course of a half-hour or more on the stove, eventually forming a spicy, caramel-like glaze on the outside of the ribs.

The process requires a stirring schedule that dawdles along for what seems like forever, and then accelerates from zero to 60 mph in the frenzied twist of an overworked wrist.

When the ribs are done, the glaze is thickly gooey like no other food. It’s sticky enough to fill cavities — or cause them. It’s slightly spicy, dark and richly laced with thick soy sauce, not the wimpy supermarket stuff.

For our party, I couldn’t find the recipe, but felt I remembered it well enough to wing it.

Bad move.

Everything smelled and felt right until the too-late-to-switch, critical-mass stage of the last five minutes, when the stirring regime is like Irish step dancing for the arms.

By then, all our guests were hanging around the kitchen, watching my frenzy.

I thought the rib mixture felt denser than usual, but mentally wrote it off to some weather condition rather than my own stupidity.

One of our friends grabbed a rib as soon as I took them off the stove, said “It smells wonderful!” and bit off a big bite.

His eyes widened a little, and then I noticed he wasn’t chewing. He wasn’t swallowing. He was … stuck.

“Cnnnnttttoppppppnnnnnnnmmmmtttttttttthhh,” he said, hands waving around, but teeth firmly clenched together.

In fact, firmly doesn’t begin to describe it.

Once we translated (“I can’t open my mouth”), we frantically started dreaming up remedies, none of which were workable.

Prying his jaw open wasn’t an option, as he had some pricey implants and bridgework.

Sipping hot tea through a straw sounded good, but anything hot enough to dislodge the stickum would have burned his mouth AND melted the straw.

Other ideas — like using my kitchen torch, dynamite or chisels — seemed a tad over the top.

In the end, we let time and saliva work their magic on the culinary Super Glue. The molars stayed put ... but the ribs went into the garbage.

Dinner was a little late. Thank heavens the rest of the menu was soft stuff.

I’m assuming that wasn’t the end of the incident. I can, however, only imagine what happened a night or two later, when neighborhood raccoons raided the trashcan.

This column was published March 6, 2003, in The Cambrian.

Hearst's Monarch was a real bear

2007-09-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

After our recent five-hour stroll through the San Francisco Zoo, husband Richard practically skipped out to the car. Granddaughter, Alyssa, 8, however, was dragging.

She whimpered, “Mommy, my knee pits hurt."

But that was at the end of our story.

Our latest family adventure was triggered by a wonderful 1889 tale about William Randolph Hearst’s stubborn streak, a California grizzly bear and a how-to for starting a zoo.

According to historians, media magnate Hearst and reporter Allen Kelly had a prolonged argument over the status of California grizzlies in the wild.

Hearst was convinced the bears were gone and challenged the reporter to find a grizzly in the state’s mountains. But to prove the point, Kelly had to bring the bear back alive.

Five months later, a triumphant Kelly returned to the city with an enormous caged grizzly, enchanting more than 20,000 people waiting at the train station.

There’s no record of Hearst’s reaction.

But what do you do with a big bear in San Francisco? If you’re banker Herbert Fleishhacker, you start a zoo.

Monarch the grizzly captivated the city for 16 years, but never made it to the zoo’s present location.

Husband Richard and I did, however, with Alyssa, her sister Caitlyn and their mother, Lori Tanner.

But first, there was the electric scooter. Now, Richard has no trouble walking, but long sessions of standing and gazing at this or that really magnify his aches and twinges into full-fledged pains in the … whatever.

Honoring his dignity surely would cut short the zoo visit. The scooter could embarrass him, but would also help him enjoy a longer day. No contest, honey. Swallow that pride.

I certainly wasn’t going to push a wheelchair up those hills, and the zoo only has two scooters to rent. So we arrived early. Side benefit: We got a good parking spot for our tailgate lunch.

Quickly, we learned how much the zoo has changed! Serpentine paths wind among spacious natural habitats laced with animals, plants, trees and ponds.

But it sure is easy to get lost. Distracted people constantly bumped into us and others, because each person had a camera in one hand, mandatory site map in the other, and a puzzled expression.

Lori said she was “surprised that the zoo was so hilly, so green and big, and that there were so many habitats rather than cages. The animals didn’t seem at all stressed out.”

Our favorites?

The stately giraffes posed for glamour shots. You could almost hear them say, “Get my good side, now. Focus, girlfriend.”

Ever watched a giraffe get up? From a spread-eagle position at the pond’s edge, the animal literally had to jump up and pull in all his legs at once.

From an elevated path, we were within a few feet of a giraffe’s head as he used a tiny branch for dental floss and, as Caitlyn put it, “picked his nose with his tongue.”

And we loved the Hearst Grizzly Gulch, funded by the Hearst Foundation.

Stephen Hearst, vice president/general manager of the Hearst Corp. and W.R.’s grandson, told the San Francisco Chronicle it was “the fastest million-dollar grant that ever went through the foundation,” taking a mere three weeks to arrange. “I called the president of the gift committee, who happens to be my father,” George R. Hearst, Jr., chairman of the corporation board.

Monarch would be so proud.

During our visit, grizzly sisters Kiona and Kachina wrestled, romped and chased each other around, climbing on a rocky, waterfall-enhanced hill.

Kachina frolicked in the pool like an otter, then cuddled up in the water near a glassed-in patio where we stood. At one point, she leaned her paw up against the glass, close enough so we could inspect her manicure!

Grandpa Richard frolicked, too. On that unusually sunny and warm day, he scooted around, giggling, taking pictures, quacking like an aoogah horn and captivating every other little boy in the place.

We left the zoo with overworked tootsies, sunburned noses and lovely memories of another family escapade.

A great day? You bet. After all, whether you’re writing about a grizzly bear named Monarch, a scooter ride or aching “knee pits,” every good story needs a good ending.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: A peachy predicament

2007-08-30T07:12:00.000-07:00

I told husband Richard that if he’d really wanted me to wash the pantry floor, all he had to do was ask.

The crash was the kind of sound that bodes serious ill from the get-go. My husband’s plaintive appeal floated out of the pantry. “Katheeeee! Helllllllllllp!”

Dashing into the kitchen, I saw him standing very still, the victim of a misguided culinary swan dive by a 26-ounce glass jar of peach sauce, which had jumped off a shelf from 6 feet up.

The noun “splashdown” has a new definition in this household.

“I’m sorrrrrrry,” Richard moaned, sounding like the 7-year-old that always hides inside his senior-citizen body.

I’ve always known I have a peach of a husband, but this was over the top.

In his defense, our pantry is a registered hazard zone. A series of wire shelves fill the entire 14-foot height to the ceiling. Each shelf is stuffed full. Some rows of cans are stacked four or five high (with little squares of non-slip rubber stuff in between).

With enough fresh water, we could survive for months off what’s in that pantry.

Yes, we’ve talked about doing a redesign, or even just a giant rearrange. But as tasks go, that one rates right up there with cleaning out our barn or digging up the entire yard, the home-repair equivalent of knee-replacement surgery or a root canal, a minus 20 on the desirable-task scale of one to 10.

First order of the peach cleanup was to make sure Richard hadn’t been hurt or cut by flying glass. He was fine, but he was masquerading as human flypaper.

I scraped peach goop off his legs, tennis shorts, socks and shoes, so he could move without spreading the misery even further.

It’s plumb astonishing how far the contents of that jar went. I haven’t seen that kind of splatter job since one of our granddaughters decided that she really, really didn’t like baby-food squash any more.

The fragrant glop had flown from the wood-floor impact zone and landed as far as 7 feet away, into the kitchen itself, and about 5 feet up in a spatter-shot pattern. It could have been considered interestingly artistic, if it had been done in acrylic paint by a blindfolded gorilla.

In the cleanup process, I found peach goo and glass bits on two ladders and a stepstool, two party-sized cutting boards, one large cooling screen, four stacked dishpans, one recycling container, seven ingredient bins, a bottle of Mexican vanilla, a jar of pickled garlic, about eight onions, a small vacuum cleaner and all available surfaces of the bi-fold pantry door.

The broom was a disaster. The potatoes looked like they had an exotic tuber fungus from Bangladesh. Glass slivers nestled in a throw rug near the stove, waaay on the other side of the kitchen.

Every time I turned around, I saw more peach-colored blobs dripping from and sticking to corners, walls, shelves and more. I went to work.

Finally the splashes, dashes and dribbles were gone, but the gumminess remained.

I knew I couldn’t leave the absolute clean-up for later. It’s summertime, and we’ve been dreading possible military maneuvers by this year’s crop of ants. So every tacky spot or residual sugar dab had to be found and eradicated, lest it trigger ant radar.

Finally, I was finished (in more ways than one). The glass, peach and sticky were gone (I think). The soapy water had been replaced with more soapy water, then Simple Green, then clean H20. We sprayed off the ladders and the stepstool.

But the saga wasn’t over yet. This was Tanner Clumsy Day, and I had a box to take up to the loft of our barn.

On the way back down, I accidentally kicked another box, which proceeded to bibbidy-bobbity-boo its way down the 11 steps to the ground floor. As the unlatched, otherwise empty box flew, it spewed hundreds of Styrofoam peanuts hither, thither and yon. It was as if I’d tossed a beanbag chair into a ceiling fan on “high.”

I hate Styrofoam, especially those pellets our kids always called “ghost poop.”

I looked at the mess I’d wrought, walked over to the light switch, flicked it off, walked out the door and slammed it shut.

At least time was on my side in this go-round. Ants don’t like Styrofoam, either.

This column was published Aug. 8, 2003 in The Cambrian.

Love, compassion and hugs for depression's victims

2007-08-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

North Coast residents have been reeling for more than a month since learning that two people they knew and loved had committed suicide within two days of each other. The deaths happened a hundred miles apart and were linked only by timing and the victims’ ties to Cambria. Their families have already suffered too much, so I won’t mention their names.

Suicide is an act of personal despair, an individual release from pain that shifts the agony into the hearts of those left behind.

From the outside in, those two wonderful people seemed to have had everything for which to live. Instead, after battling clinical depression for most of their lives, each made the conscious decision to die.

Why? Nobody can answer that. And nobody could have prevented it. As the priest said at one of the services, there was nothing, nothing any of us could have done. We could not have stopped the suicides, no matter how ready and willing to help we were.

Shirley Bianchi understands. Her adopted granddaughter, a clinically depressed preteen, committed suicide in 2000. “You know the ‘what if’ in your mind is a dead end, but still it haunts you. You ask yourself, ‘Could I have helped?’” the former county supervisor said. “No. There’s nothing you could have done.”

Most of us are deeply sad or depressed at some time in our lives. Usually, it’s short term and triggered by events, not chemistry.

Clinical depression, however, is a disease like diabetes, cancer or heart disease. Nobody is to blame, so there should be no stigma, only love and compassion.

Local psychologist Steve Brody likened clinically depressed patients to diabetics, because both “have been biochemically hijacked.” Simply stated, depressives’ brains have short-circuited.

Economic, social and educational levels don’t matter. Neither does age, although healthy, active seniors seem more immune. Children can be clinically depressed. So can elderly people, teens, young mothers, hearty grandpas. Anybody.

Deep depression is so much more than a permanently broken heart or spirit. It’s not something you can ignore, fix with a pep talk or wish away. You don’t “get over it.” It’s insidious, agonizing to watch in someone you love and difficult to diagnose and treat.

Are you depressed because you’re tired or ill or stressed to the max? Or are you stressed, sick and exhausted because you’re biochemically depressed?

Brody’s clients often ask him “Why am I depressed?” and “How long will this last?” Even specialists have a tough time answering such questions.

People can take do-it-yourself “depression inventories,” quick and simple questionnaires that can help identify what’s happening. However, because it’s so easy to self-diagnose incorrectly, it’s wise to have a professional interpret the test.

But “people with biochemical depression don’t have to tough it out alone,” Brody said. “You don’t have to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist — they handle the tricky cases. First talk to your primary physician or your minister, or ask for referrals from friends who’ve battled depression.”

Some medical-insurance programs have mental-health hotlines with strong privacy protections. The county’s “Hotline also is a great resource of information and referral. They’ll listen,” and then refer the caller to others who can help, Brody said. He also recommends the Community Counseling Center in San Luis Obispo.

Brody said patients also shouldn’t shy away from anti-depressive medicines, which can be “tremendously helpful, a good biochemical alternative.”

All that help is available, but the depressive person must be ready to take those steps and stick with treatments. Some simply can’t cope.

When such tragedies strike, caring Cambrians know what to do. They cry, hug, reach out and then go on.

We heal by talking about our late friends and sharing activities that made them smile while they were alive. We remember their passions — in this case, classical music, bicycle racing, 4-H, ocean sports, children.

We also can honor our friends by giving … to Jim Ellman’s “Bikes for Tikes” drive, for instance, or Allied Arts Association so a child can learn to play a musical instrument. Sponsor a youngster for surfing camp. Help a kid with a 4-H project.

Or take your children or grandchildren to the beach, a concert or on a bicycle ride. Think happy thoughts about your friend. Smile and remember the good times.

Then be grateful for the goodness of life you have.

Help is available
• Hotline of San Luis Obispo, 549-8989 (toll-free at 800-549-8989)
• Community Counseling Center, 1129 Marsh St., San Luis Obispo, 543-7969
• National Crisis Hotline, 800-SUICIDE

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Vacation planning's half the fun

2007-08-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

This column first appeared in The Cambrian Aug. 24, 2006. This year, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

People tease me because I like to plan ahead for vacationing. But sometimes it really pays off.

For instance, a recent trip sounded simple enough: meet our two youngest granddaughters and their mother for a fun-filled weekend in Santa Cruz.

But there were lots of reasons not to do what we were about to do.

1. It was high season, two weeks before Labor Day. Did we understand the concept of seasonal rates? We certainly do.

2. Anybody who hadn't yet had their vacation-for-the-summer was on the road, too, trying desperately to be someplace else.

3. As if all that wasn't enough, the other end of Monterey Bay was packed with people and their vehicles, most of which cost more than houses. Yup, it was Car Week, culminating in the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance (150 bucks per ticket to stroll through the Lamborghinis and Daimlers).

4. If you haven't spent time in Santa Cruz, as we hadn't, it's a shock to discover you can't get from Point A to Point B without first going to Point Q, which isn't close to anything you want.

5. Put a whole bunch of impatient people on those narrow, meandering streets, add the results of an overzealous stop-sign salesman and you've got a recipe for traffic jams.

6. Our group ranged in age from 7 to 80, some of whom have a severe aversion to putting their bodies on Boardwalk rides that a psychotic weather wonk accurately named as "Cyclone," "Tsunami," "Tornado" or "Typhoon."

We knew all this. We still wanted to go ... silly us.

I had to plan ahead. Spur of the moment doesn't work on in mid-August in California's oldest seaside resort area.

A month before, we managed to snag the last two available rooms at a fairly new Best Western hotel in Capitola. It's on one of the only straight-line streets from Highway 1 to anywhere near the beach, and is a block from the county's only shopping mall.

After neighbor Christine Greek forwarded details about a lovely-sounding Capitola restaurant, we made Saturday-night reservations online.

Super! Two big decisions made.

But planning ahead is more than pouring over touristy literature or making sure we could lay our weary heads on a clean pillow each night. I believe in travelers' espionage.

Arriving a day early, husband Richard and I did area surveillance. Good thing, too. Remember Items 4 and 5?

We learned that, to find a decent parking place at the Boardwalk, we'd have to arrive at least an hour before it opens at 11 a.m. We knew weekend lines would be long, so we bought passes and tickets early Friday for Saturday. We even located some rare benches with shade where weary grandparents could park for a rest.

We also drove up Highway 17 and back so we could give precise instructions to a direction-challenged driver.

We toured Capitola's beach areas, finding stunning shorelines, more parking crunches, narrow one-way streets and neighborhoods that would fit right into a Greek hillside. We tracked down the Shadowbrook restaurant, tucked high on a hill and accessible only by lots of stairs or a perky little red tram.

We found Gayle's, a delightful bakery, and brought back to the hotel an ethereally light orange chiffon cake and snickerdoodle muffins, dredged in cinnamon sugar. And a clerk alerted us to a popular, funky pizza-and-pasta place right around the corner from our hotel, so our travel-weary family could get out of their van and walk to a tasty dinner.

There! Not only were we confident we'd done everything possible to make our one-day adventure together a success, we had a great time doing the strategic reconnaissance.

The best successes were:

* Strolling to a nearby restaurant the first night together to share pizza, salad and a lovely bowl of Italian wedding soup. No pressure, no parking hassle, no more driving.

* Getting to the Boardwalk early, finding a super parking space and letting Caitlyn and Alyssa frolic on the breathtaking beach until the rides opened.

* Taking a quiet, kickback lunchtime-out in the van, using fixings from our cooler.

* Finding truly wonderful doughnuts from 41st Donut House, about a block from the hotel. "The best I've had since I quit making them myself at our bakery," Richard told the pleased-as-punch owner.

* Booking Shadowbrook reservations online, which netted us a waterfront table in the sold-out restaurant. The setting and meal were spectacular and exquisite.

* And most of all, by figuring out where we would be going and how to get there, we spent our sun-drenched, all-too-brief time together having fun instead of getting lost.

Will we meet them again in Santa Cruz? Here's a clue: We bought the girls season tickets to the Boardwalk. They may get me on that "Hurricane" ride yet, if I can't preplan my way out of it.

Getting a line on Follies tickets

2007-08-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

A chamber-of-commerce employee wandered out of her Main Street office into a minor mob scene at a time when most of downtown Cambria usually is still asleep.

“What are we selling here, Harry Potter books?” Rody Salkeld quipped shortly before 9 a.m. Aug. 1.

Not quite, but more than 60 people had queued up to buy reserved-seat tickets for Pinedorado Follies 2007. The show runs Wednesday through Sunday, Aug. 29 through Sept. 2.

Guaranteed seats are so coveted that Cambrians line up for hours to snag some. General admission tickets are also available, but front-of-the-hall reserved seats have the best sight lines.

Seeing a show up close can be glorious. I’ll never forget being in the front row and watching the chandelier come down in “Phantom of the Opera.”

But premier seats can have risks attached. We were in the second row at “Tap Dogs” when ushers urged us to don rain slickers before hyperactive, work-booted dancers started skipping and stomping in a water-filled tray.

On Aug. 1, Mark Kramer started the Follies queue before dawn, although sales wouldn’t start for another three hours. Kay Luthi and Dorothy Prychoda soon lined up behind him. By 6:15 a.m., eight people were in place.

Those who really planned ahead brought folding chairs.

This year, each buyer got a numbered slip denoting a specific spot in line, so people were free to wander around a bit, get a mocha latte or take a quick catnap in a warm car.

However, most stalwarts stayed in the line-up, chatting, laughing, shivering and enjoying the annual coffee klatch for early birds.

Prychoda cuddled into her blue camp chair. “It’s worth it to get here early. Yes, you get reserved seats, but we also come for the camaraderie and companionship.”

Each person could buy only six tickets. No batch buying of 25 tickets, no sirree. We’ll have none of that nasty ticket scalping at our Follies.

But Bud Goff needed seven tickets, so he could see the Follies with six family members. So friend Susan Detweiler, there to buy a few tickets of her own, snagged two for Goff in one row, and he bought five in the next row back.

All income goes to Pinedorado’s 59-year sponsor, the Cambria Lions Club, which spreads funds around to other community causes.

And how the shows have changed over the years!

I remember when Pinedorado’s show was a melodrama. Lots of fun, but amateur night, for sure, rather like first-round, citywide tryouts for “America’s Got Talent.”

Follies concepts and performances have evolved, but shows took a giant leap forward this century with direction by Bobbie Monroe, Ruth Fleming and then, starting in 2002, under Peggy Christianson’s professional-quality (though still volunteer) direction.

It takes a full year to create a Follies show. When the final curtain call rings down on the 2007 version, Christianson, co-producer Teela DePond, the Zaragosa family and others already will have begun planning the 2008 edition.

Combine Christianson’s writing, directing and dancing skill with her Disney background and perfectionistic “we’ve got to add something new” attitude, and singers and dancers shine in the spotlights.

Part of the success is technical innovation, including black lighting, a fog machine, wireless microphones and professional lighting equipment borrowed from Cambria resident Ted Fowler, whose firm does entertainment lighting worldwide.

Christianson said, “Every year, we have to add something we don’t know how to do — yet — and then we have to learn it fast.”

So, look for new gadgetry, video and other special effects. I don’t want to be a spoiler, so I won’t say what more than four dozen cast members of all ages will be doing. But seeing Kirk Henning with “goats” and Jerry McKinnon as a centurion ought to be worth the cost. And hearing Cody Pettit and John Ruml singing in English accents should be priceless.

First-in-line Kramer said it’s been years since he stood in a queue for tickets for anything other than the Follies.

“It’s the only show in town, babe,” he explained with a chuck-le. “You can’t miss this one.”

By about 10:15 a.m. Aug. 1, lined-up people who shared that sentiment had already bought more than $7,000 worth of tickets.

(For more Follies ticket information, log onto http://media.sanluisobispo.com/archive/cambrian.pdf, and scroll to Page 19).

BEST OF: Posturing for the human-nature show

2007-08-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Figure this one out: We hate crowds, but we love going to county fairs, concerts, shopping malls, crowded street corners and similar hustle-bustle-busy settings.

Sure, we shop, eat fair food and listen to music. But in crowds, we get our real entertainment out of people watching. As husband Richard says, “Humans come in such interesting shapes and styles.” Temperaments and attitudes, too, not to mention wardrobes.

It is amazing how much difference the clothes can make.

Just imagine two twins — be they Bobsey or Olsen. Put one twin in nicely fitting jeans, a simple, tucked-in t-shirt that has met a washing machine once or twice in its life, and clean sandals or tennis shoes.

Then dress the other twin in a strapless, clingy top that stops short of covering where the bottom band of her bra ought to be, sockless feet in untied running shoes that look like gunboats and finish the costume off with some baggy, wrinkled, below-the-knee shorts barely suspended from her tush by good luck and imaginary push pins.

Don’t scoff. We saw both girls on a cable car in San Francisco.

Variety may be the spice of life in clothes and body styles, but within the limitless range of humans there is a remarkable similarity in the non-verbal language broadcast by those bodies.

I’ve written before about the oh-so-identifiable pose of someone trying to make a cell-phone call or trying to keep an ongoing one connected. You can spot it a block away.

Since then, other postures have come to mind, body positions that immediately tell the rest of us what’s going on.

People assuming certain postures might as well tack a billboard on their foreheads, proclaiming exactly what they’re doing.

For instance:

• The abstracted expression, determined stride and back-and-forth head movements of somebody wandering through a parking lot, looking in vain for the vehicle he or she rode in on

• The slammed-together eyebrows, total denial, hunched shoulders and abject misery of a 14-year-old boy forced to shop for clothes and shoes with his mother and grandmother

• The ultra-straight backs, stiff shoulders and popped-out eyes of a roomful of men holding in their stomachs as soon as a super-model type female walks into the room

• The mass clutching of belts, unsnapping and bringing of cellular phones to ears when the tweedledum music of an incoming call strikes, interrupting a packed public meeting or performance, and everybody tries to figure out quickly whose phone it is that’s interrupting the proceedings

• The tucked arms, rounded shoulders and mock-quivering lips of a child who’s playing up a minor “boo boo” for total attention, maximum sympathy and the 15th “Shrek” Band-Aid of the day

• The one-shoulder-higher-than-the-other, shifty-eyed, head-tilted pose of someone ordering liver-and-onions in a busy restaurant

• The stretched neck and back, tilted seating posture and raised chin of a newly seated restaurant patron, surreptitiously peering over shoulders of nearby diners to inspect what each of them is eating before placing his own order

• The “I can’t believe I’m doing this” facial expression and backward lean of someone taking a first foray off the pool’s high board

• The hunched-over posture and crowd-scanning over-the-blanket gaze of a mom who must nurse her baby in a public place

• The focused step-step-step stride, head slightly forward of feet and pained expression that advertises, “Don’t offer me a ride. I’m doing this because my doctor (wife/mother) says I have to do at least two miles a day”

• The total boredom and “Puleeeeeeeeease hurry up” expression of a man waiting for his wife by the door of the women’s restroom, especially at the abovementioned county fair or concert. Also its close relative, the can’t-stand-still hopping and twisting of someone at the end of a long line, desperately waiting to get into the same facility, or

• The “Heavens no, I’m not doing what you think I’m doing” expression, head position and arm-extended pose of a person waiting at the side of the road, holding the other end of a leash in one hand and an empty plastic bag in the other.

So, the next time you’re stuck in line, or are waiting for someone to arrive, check it out. See if you can figure out the storylines behind the postures.

Hmmmm. I wonder what that I look like when I’m doing that?

Timber! Missing tree’s company

2007-07-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

As I drove over the hill, I saw the tree trimmer at work. One by one, he cut limbs from the tall pine. I didn’t watch the full decapitation. It was hard enough just knowing the iconic tree soon would be reduced to a stump.

It’s only a tree, Kathe, not even in your immediate neighborhood. Get over it.

But …

We knew for years that the stately old Monterey pine was fading. Later, the tree’s skeleton still stood guard over the intersection of Ardath Drive and Madison Street, reaching high into the sunset.

At the “Y” in the road, the tree had been a most visible symbol of Cambria’s extraordinary native stand of Monterey pines, the trees that blanket our hillsides nearly to the sea.

We cherish our trademark pines — especially when sunshine or moonglow glimmers through the branches, or fog weaves its ghostly fingers into the treetops.

We’re so lucky. As we go about our daily living, we get to travel through the forest. We can walk in our forest, show it off to our grandchildren and even get lost in it, emotionally or literally.

Within a few minutes, we can see sights ranging from seaside tidepools to Scott Rock. We drive along Main Street from Highway 1 into town, or along Fern or Strawberry canyons.

We hike up (and I do mean up) to the Cambria Cemetery or to Old Santa Rosa Chapel. We stroll Fiscalini Ranch Preserve and exult that it’s really ours. We spy otters or whales from Leffingwell Landing, then bicycle along the creek roads.

Sometimes we even forget to look at all that beauty. What a pity.

We also fret about the trees when weather is hot and dry, about winds, diseases, fungi, fire and more. Then when wind-driven rains deluge us, we also agonize about what the trees might do us and our homes.

Justifiably concerned, we hope to protect the forest, take care of it, properly manage it.

Some say others have overreacted in how they trimmed up brush and weeds underneath the pines. It’s all a matter of degree, I guess. One person’s mandated weed removal is another’s rape of the environment.

This is Cambria, after all. We each see our town through different binoculars.

After a while, it’s easy to think of our forest as a solitary entity. But each tree is an individual. And this tree was so prominent.

In the 1970s, crews repaved Ardath at Madison using smooth-polished beach rock. In the rain, dew or heavy fog, the rocks got wet. And slippery. Cars would suddenly and helplessly hydroplane, gliding toward oblivion.

Time and time again, the big old pine was Mother Nature’s stand-in for an emergency brake. It frequently halted sliding cars before they could tumble down the hill into what was then the home of Jerry Juhl, head writer for the “Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street.”

On each rainy night, Jerry and wife Susan would mull over their options — wait for the inevitable to happen or alert the tow-truck to stand by.

The sentinel tree at the Y in the road also served as a prominent signpost. For decades, it was in just the right spot to help people find their way. Garage sales on Marine Terrace, events at Camp Ocean Pines, parties, weddings, reunions — all were proudly announced on scrawled signs or formal banners pinned briefly to “the tree.”

Brief directions told drivers which way to go … or, in at least one case, where not to go.

That sign had someone’s name at the top, above an arrow pointing to the right. The arrow was in a circle slashed with a line drawn through it. At the bottom, the sign read, “Not that way, dummy!”

The big old pine was a neighborhood landmark. And now it’s gone.

We’re seeing more and more of these losses. Trees don’t last forever, you know. One by one, other tree guys will take down the dying, the dangerous and the skeletons.

With each removal, we’ll be left with a newly opened patch of view and a vague sense that something important is missing. And we’ll be right.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com.

BEST OF: Line of duty drew tragically close

2007-07-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

This column first ran four years ago, on July 20, 2003. Judges in the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s annual Better Newspapers Contest gave it the best-writing award for that year.

It was the call every journalist dreads — an assignment to cover a story about a tragedy befalling a friend or family member.

The request from The Tribune’s assistant city editor was succinct: “We’ve had a report of a structure fire six miles up San Simeon Creek Road. Can you go?”

I know what’s up there, and the knowledge hit me like a pile driver someplace between my chest bone and my belly button. It had to be on the Warren compound, a grouping of ranch houses, barns and other buildings. I’ve known the Warrens — including my “acquired brother” Bill Warren — for more than three decades.

I didn’t tell my editor about my probable ties to the call, which came Thursday afternoon (July 17, 2003), or he never would have sent me. I went, although I’m not sure why. Maybe I thought I could help the family. Maybe I was praying for a magic wand to wave.“Let it be the barn,” I whispered. “Don’t let it be Grandma Florence,” Bill’s elderly mother.

Those gut-wrenching situations happen more frequently to firefighters, ambulance crews and law-enforcement officials, especially in small towns. Soldiers, too. I don’t know how they do it. They have my profound respect.

I don’t remember much about the drive up those six hilly miles, except I was following what turned out to be the first few fire trucks going to the scene.

As soon as I rounded the corner onto the creek road, I could see the smoke. It reminded me of another day nine years earlier, when I came over a different hill and saw my own home going up in flames. Only that time, thanks to a phone alert, I knew nobody had been hurt.

This time, the worst was yet to come. As I got to the crest of the hill, I saw it. Bill Warren’s house was engulfed in flames. I parked out of the way of the oncoming hordes of fire trucks and ran up the hill.

My knees held up somehow, but my heart sank. I knew how much pride Bill had in his “treasures,” the vast collection of antiques and paintings he’d stuffed into his tiny, Cold-War-era house. He might have gone back in to get them, or to try to snuff the fire.

I reached out for Tim, Bill’s partner of more than a quarter century, and we clung together for several minutes. He told me what he knew: Bill had been on the phone talking to Tim and said, “My house is on fire.”

By the time Tim arrived, he said, the house was engulfed in flames and he couldn’t get in because the blaze was so hot. But he and Mike Johnson, Bill’s nephew who lives on the property, tried anyway.

Tim and Mike were so, so afraid that Bill was still inside the house.

With no real way to help them or anybody else, I went to work, hiding my terror behind the lens of my camera and the scribbles on my reporter’s pad. Journalists are supposed to be able to separate themselves from the pain and anguish of those they cover.

Perhaps it was easier to deal with the pain with that professional buffer zone between me and it, rather than taking it all in, head on.

But focusing on the flames was tough, knowing what might be in the rubble. My thighs, shoulders and upper arms started to shake, and I had to brace myself against a handy fire truck before I could take the photos.

I shot frame after frame, knowing all the while that readers who’ve never been at a big fire can’t begin to sense the scene from the pictures that we photographers take. There are different shades of smoke that tell experienced firefighters what’s burning. There’s the overwhelming sight of the flames and the rushing sounds of the roaring fire, crumpling walls, exploding tanks or ammunition, the muted sobs of terrified family members, the screeching of pets or livestock.

And the smell, that awful, catch-in-the-throat stench that can forever stop you from lighting a fire in a fireplace.

It takes all the senses, with full peripheral vision and more, to absorb the horror.

I kept at it. I knew Bill would want me to. All ranchers know the work never stops, no matter what. Cattle must be fed and sold, fences mended, legal matters tended to. Ranchers deal with the cycle of life and death all the time, but not this way.

The same work ethic also applies to a reporter, especially a community journalist whose primary responsibility is to a small town’s newspaper with a small staff.

Oh, Billy. Where are you?

Bill Warren was the epitome of a gentle giant, a man I looked up to in many ways. In fact, one of my favorite photos of him shows 6-foot-5-inch Bill standing beside 5-foot-1-inch me with his elbow resting on the top of my head.

He was central casting for the long, tall, lanky rancher. With his dense mustache, the inevitable logo cap and his jeans-n-boots, he fit right in at a branding, at the sales yard in Templeton or on the range.

Photos I took of Bill in 1994 show his long legs almost dragging dirt as he rode his 15-hands-high horse. He could throw a calf or a bale of hay and then turn around and tenderly scoop up a wet, tiny lamb.

When his dad, Walter Warren, was dying, Bill became the father. He carried his Walter to bed, to the bathroom. He tended his parents mornings and nights, then tended family ranchlands during the day.

Bill was the third person I met when I moved to Cambria in 1971. He took my then young sons for their first horseback ride (another photo I treasure). He took us all for what became the legendary “Uncle Billy’s Wild Jeep Ride.” He became an embedded member of our family.

In fact, just before my mother died in 1988, she said she was leaving me in good hands — those of my husband, Richard, our sons and the three “brothers” I’d acquired in Cambria. Bill was one of them.

Later, Bill’s 90-year-old mother, Florence Warren, had her family and friends, who came to grieve with her and offer her support. But that day, she could only cry out as I held her, “Why did they take my son from me? What will I do? He’s the one who takes care of me.”

A neighbor in shock said later that “Bill was the consummate caretaker. He took care of all of us.”

Five hours after I arrived at the fire, I was at my office, trying to write what I’d seen and heard, what I’d been told and what they wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me. I could tell the investigators had their suspicions, but they weren’t confirming anything about Bill until forensic tests and other elements of the investigation are complete.

I like to think that when I took that assignment, and tried to tell his story, I was returning some of the caring Bill gave to me back to his family in his name.

But it’s an assignment that will haunt me, that will make me cry again and again, that will come to me in those dark-of-night dreams that leave me shaken and disoriented the next morning.

If I could turn back the clock, would I take the assignment again? Probably. Do I know why? No. Just call it my epitaph to a good man, to a good friend and my brother.

A lover of art, music, words turns the page

2007-07-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

For those who don’t know Lee Sutter well, her retirement June 29 may seem just another loss to The Tribune’s fount of institutional knowledge. But for lots of us — especially our readers — Lee’s departure marks the end of a nearly two-decade era.

I remember well the day in 1992 when I called The Cambrian’s office to volunteer my services. I’d heard that the current editor was out of commission for a while, having removed several appendages when he ran over his foot with a lawn mower.

As an unpaid columnist for the paper since 1981, I knew the pressures News Editor Lee would be facing. I had a little spare time to contribute, and I wanted to help.

Without even taking a breath, Lee said, “That’s right. You can write hard news, too, can’t you?”

I’ve been a staff writer ever since.

Lee and I shared so much, dating back to The Cambrian’s final days at the old West Village location, when paste-up artists still used gooey glue to put the paper together.

Deadline day then was pure pandemonium, as we sprinted against the clock to get the flats out the door to San Luis Obispo for the all-important weekly date with the pressmen.

Our pressures and deadlines haven’t changed, but how we get to the end of our weekly race certainly has.

Lee and I worked side by side around the clock, covering storms and floods, fires, accidents and other catastrophes — the hard news of a weekly paper dedicated to its community.

We’ve held each other in long hugs as we sobbed because a beloved community member had died. We’ve raged together at injustice or governmental stupidity. And we’ve laughed. Oh, how we laughed.

We survived moving the entire office. We switched from ancient DOS-based computers to new Macs. We adjusted to new owners (several times).

In each case, we had to adapt in a flash. Given the nature of our business, we still had a paper to get out each week.

It didn’t matter that we had no idea, for instance, what Quark was, other than a basic form of matter or an obscure Eastern European cheese. Did we know how to use Quark software to format a computerized newspaper page? No. Did we do it? Yes. Quickly.

Lee taught me so much, as a writer, proofreader and human being.
As any former Sutter student will tell you, it’s a vast understatement to say Lee is compulsive about grammar, spelling and punctuation (especially hyphens). She’d make lists of common errors, then grill us on them. We’d often arrive for work to find corrections scrawled on Post-Its stuck to our computer monitors.

Yes, sometimes, when we’d made the same mistake for the fifth time, she’d get … well, cranky. But know what? We never forgot those particular edicts again.

My favorite Lee memories, however, are of her dedication to her work, her glee when writing about a band she loved, or seeing work by an artist she admired, or reviewing a book she’d absorbed in a single sitting.

The A&E (arts and events) pages are where her heart was and is. And her enthusiasm would glow through the newsprint into readers’ souls. (Fortunately, she’ll still be doing some arts features for The Tribune and Cambrian. Lucky us.)

Lee is a devoted friend and defender for her cadre of artistic creators, her nonprofit folks, readers in general and always for underdogs and the underprivileged.

She also has a maniacal laugh. Put Lee and cartoonist/musician/artist/inventor Art Van Rhyn in the same room and, in minutes, everybody’s guffawing.

Often, Lee would giggle and, not even knowing what had tickled her funny bone, I’d laugh and we’d be off to the races for 10 or 15 minutes.

Anybody walking through the door surely should have called for the men in white coats. But most visitors simply joined in the hilarity. Fortunately, lots of Cambrians are just as quirky as we are.

So many good memories.

I’m delighted for Lee, that she’ll have her summer and her life ahead of her while she’s young and spry enough to enjoy them. She’ll have decades filled with Live Oak fests, camping trips, jaunts with daughter Stacy, songwriting and singing, playing with the Center Street Mercantile & Blacksmith String Band and other groups, spur-of-the-minute adventures and so much more.

Go get ’em, girl. You’ve earned it. But wow, Lee, we’ll miss you.

Note: Send art show announcements to Lee Sutter at sutterlee@hotmail.com.

BEST OF: A (bushy) tale of lost opportunities

2007-07-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

I didn't know squirrels could swear. What a surprise.

The fuzzy-tailed little foragers are the bane of boardwalk managers, gardeners, farmers, ranchers ... and those who feed wild birds at home.

At Tanner Manor, husband Richard fills a variety of tubes, towers and platters with birdseed and various globes with sugar syrup. He also carries a pocket full of peanuts.

We tell him, but not too vehemently, that a truly dedicated wildlife lover shouldn't feed the critters.

But, ‘fessing up, we all enjoy watching hummingbirds zooming past to defend their feeders against anything larger than a mosquito and smaller than a breadbox. We watch flocks of little birds pushing and shoving at the feed trough, and laugh at scrub-jay antics when they're reminded it's physically impossible to simultaneously pick up three peanuts-in-the-shell in one beak.

A free lunch for squirrels

However, it never was Richard's intention to provide a Hometown Buffet for squirrels.

Oops. We forgot to tell the squirrels.

Originally, Richard thought that hanging a feeder from the roof on a long, slick wire would do it.

Bosh.

Following that installation, our first fluffy explorer dashed across the roof, skittered down the beam from which the feeder hung and looked puzzled.

After some abortive tries over several days, he made his move. He slowly inched over the edge of the overhang, and, clutching the board for dear life with one paw, he reached out with the other to grab the wire, which became his fireman's pole.

It was all over but the egress.

After filling up with seeds, the squirrel pondered his options. He tried several times to crawl up the wire, but kept backsliding down, clonking himself on the top of the feeder roof as he landed. Finally, the explorer set his shoulders, clenched his jaw to secure the seeds and leapt off the feeder to the deck, about 8 feet below.

We had ourselves a flying squirrel. Swell.

We tried various other feeders and schemes, none of which deterred the cagey critters for long. In the meantime, the squirrels' tunnels and burrows began undermining the bluff by our home. Landscapers clucked and fretted about the land's stability if the beasties continued to feast on seeds and dig in the dirt.

"If you find a feeder they can't get into, we won't have to poison them," they admonished. Gulp. Poison?

A better bird feeder

Then Editor Bert got a spiffy three-tube bird feeder, which he installed outside his window at The Cambrian's office. It looked almost squirrel proof, by golly, with its tightly capped, long, narrow tubes, each about 2-1/4 inches in diameter. We went right out and bought one of our own, and it seemed to work.

However, when we got back home after a vacation, Richard noticed that one of the tubes' top caps had disappeared. How strange. It had been a snug fit, tough enough for him to remove at fill-up time. We didn't think bird could dislodge the cap, unless turkey vultures have taken to attacking errant bird feeders.

Then Richard saw the culprit.

My chuckling husband reported his findings. "The squirrel had removed another cap and had wedged his body about two-thirds of the way down into one of those skinny tubes. It was a tight fit. His body completely stuffed the tube and only the tip of his tail stuck out the top.

"He was almost inhaling the seeds — I could actually watch the seed level going down."

Then the squirrel spotted Richard.

"He tried to wriggle back out, but what had slid easily into the tube was having a heck of time getting back out again," my husband reported. "His cheeks were too full, and he couldn't get enough traction to force himself out backwards. We had an empty feeder tube and a very full squirrel."

That’s when the air turned blue with squirrelly blasphemy. In the imaginary cartoon balloon over his head, the expletives were not deleted.

The critter wriggled, squirmed and twisted, to no avail. His was the classical image of a frantic, defiant little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Spewing seeds and swear words

Finally, the thoroughly disgusted squirrel spat some seeds back into the tube, a few at a time, just barely enough so he finally could tug himself free. He popped out of the tube like an animated champagne cork, and ZIP — he was gone, spewing more seeds, pure rage and profanity as he vanished.

By then, Richard was gasping for breath and bent over double, guffawing about what he'd seen. Watching a thoroughly ticked-off squirrel clearly was much better than seeing the best Marx Brothers' movie.

Yes, we're still in the market for a squirrel-foxing bird feeder. But in the meantime, we'll have lots of fun trying to translate squirrel cuss words.

This column ran in The Cambrian on Sept. 30, 2004. Since then, we have abandoned the idea of dispensing free bird seeds. The squirrels won this round. But we inadvertently visit them every time we take a walk on the Moonstone Beach Drive boardwalk. And, along the way, if we don't feed the fuzzy little rodents, we still get our ration of squirrel blasphemy.

Oops! Did I say that out loud?

2007-06-28T06:21:00.000-07:00

Do you talk to yourself … not out loud, but inside your head? I’ve done it all my life. Sometimes it worries me. But mostly, I figure everybody does it.

It’s different than regular thinking. I’m holding mini-conversations with myself, as I hash out problems, practice what I want to say to someone, chastise myself or even lavish a little self-praise.

Often, I talk to myself as I’m driving. As my body takes one trip, my mind is on another, with random thoughts bobbing about like Styrofoam pellets in a stiff wind.

But my self-chats keep me company, keep me awake and don’t distract me nearly as much as talking on a cell phone would.

Sometimes, I talk to myself about what I’m seeing from my mobile, metal cocoon.

For instance:
“My goodness, that’s a tire sticking up halfway out of the bog. Wonder how it got there? Hmmm. I could make believe I’m the artist Christo and stick hundreds of mannequin arms and legs into the mud out there. Would anybody notice and, if they did, what would they think?”

Or: (Screeech.) “You idiot! Whaddya mean, doing 80 in a 55 mph zone!”

Or: (A sister discussion.) “Geez, I believe in being safe. But putting along at 8 mph when the speed-limit sign said 35?”

Or: “ ‘PARADDL.’ Now that’s a cool personalized license plate! I actually know what it means (I’m the daughter of a musician — paradiddle is a drum roll). But that other personalized plate over there doesn’t make any sense at all. I want to stomp over and ask the driver what in *&^%$#@ it means.’” I haven’t done that yet, but someday …

Some of my best self-talks are about mental snapshots I take as I drive along.

For instance, I spied an older man walking slowly along Cambria’s Main Street, heading for Highway 1. He didn’t look happy about what he was doing.

All of a sudden, there was a curb alongside his feet.

The man surreptitiously looked around to see if anybody was watching, but didn’t spot me. He grinned, then hopped up on the curb. Using his arms for balance as a tightrope-walker would, he almost skipped along the raised concrete edging.

I told myself it was like watching Archie Bunker morph instantly into Peter Pan.

Another time, as we drove north on Highway 1 near Año Nuevo, we saw a Norman Rockwell-style image of agriculture in progress.

A man was walking slowly along some freshly harrowed rows. At regular intervals, he’d reach into the big knapsack at his side and grab a handful of what appeared to be large seeds — perhaps for the area’s legendary pumpkins.

In a graceful movement choreographed by years of experience, he sowed the seeds, which flew from his fingers in an even, fan-shaped spray.

“It’s just like a modern dance,” I said in my head, and then repeated it for husband Richard.

He had noticed the man, too.

“Reminds me of Daddy Anderson,” he said of his former father-in-law.

Daddy Anderson spent his entire life tending the soil of his Northern Utah farm. Often, as he’d check his fields, he’d absentmindedly reach down for a pinch of dirt. He’d roll it around between his thumb and a couple of fingers, then put a bit of it on his tongue.

He was so in tune with his land, he could taste if something was wrong with the soil.

That’s a real farmer. He was worlds away from cowboy-hatted, lizard-skin-booted agribusiness CEOs who talk the talk, but couldn’t walk their way out of a corral without falling face-first into the manure.

And wouldn’t that be a mental image to talk to yourself about?

It’s like the old story about the little boy who asked the man, “Hey mister, are you a real cowboy?”

“Why yes, I am,” the rancher drawled. “See my cowboy hat, and my cowboy shirt? I’ve got a real Western belt and gen-u-ine Levi’s jeans.”

“But mister,” the boy said, “you’re not wearing cowboy boots!”

The man paused and said, “Now, son, I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a California truck driver.”

BEST OF: We hold this truth to be self-evident

2007-06-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Cambria’s Independence Day festivities are billed as an "Old Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration."

Is there any other kind? Have you ever been tempted to attend a "New Wave Fourth of July"?

Me neither. In fact, I've never even seen one suggested.

Maybe that's because some things are best when left alone.

It's called tradition.

It brings to mind a recent recipe I read for dressing up watermelon. Cubes of the fruit were frozen, then sprinkled with sun-dried tomatoes and drizzled with basil-and-chipotle-infused syrup.

It might be wonderful, but it's not watermelon the way I want to remember it. And I think I'll pass this time.

Year after year after year, the American Legion's Independence Day celebration at Shamel Park does tradition, which is exactly what it's supposed to do.

It gives me a lump in my throat when I see the color guard and the flag, when I hear the anthem.

We giggle as we watch kids of all ages try to run forward with one leg in a shared sack or catch a water balloon without breaking it.

Everybody gathers around and cheers their favorite servers, as we wonder whether San Simeon Bar & Grill will win the waiter-waitress race again this year.

We eat all the wrong things and enjoy every bite. We listen to the music and might even get up to dance (if we can hide in a remote corner of the park).

And we thrill to the fireworks display, which we find much more fun to watch than overwhelming gazillion-dollar shows that fill the sky for hours with so many bursts and blasts, you really don't get to enjoy any of them individually. Those mega-shows are so overwhelming, my eyes and ears get tired.

Tradition.

Cambria’s Shamel Park celebration reminds me of my childhood, of Independence Days spent with family at Manursing Island Country Club in Rye, N.Y.

I remember swimming off and on all day with my Aunt Kate (only a couple of years older than I am) and Cousin John. We frolicked until we were human prunes. When we got dressed, we had that strange dizzy sense that comes with being in dry clothes after having been in the water so long.

We'd go to the little poolside snack bar and get big vanilla ice-cream cones. The clerk would give us each a cone-shaped paper cup of chocolate shot to dip the rapidly melting ice cream into.

Yum.

The next big event was the buffet dinner in the dining room that overlooked Long Island Sound.

We'd devour the shrimp in cocktail sauce, the fried chicken, the deviled eggs and those bite-sized chocolate eclairs.

And, as dusk fell, we'd marvel at the fireworks.

Tradition.

Several decades ago in Cambria, the Independence Day celebration was on hiatus for a while.

The now defunct North Coast Property Owners Association revived the fireworks, much to the glee of residents and visitors, who'd been rather sulky over the lack of festivities.

When the association folded, the Cambria Chamber of Commerce took over and expanded the event.

Recently, I reminisced about all that with Del Clegg of Cookie Crock Market fame. He and I were among the directors on the chamber's board then.

He teased me about my having to wear a tall, sequined red hat with a long, blue feather on it.

I'm so short, that was the only way the other organizers could find me in the crowd.

The chamber was determined to make the event family friendly. We’re so glad it has stayed that way, thanks to American Legion Post No. 432.

We know how hard it is to pull together an event like that, how many people it takes doing so many tasks.

Del also reminded me of the 8-foot-long strawberry shortcake that husband Richard and I provided to the ceremony each year from our bakery. The shortcake required pounds of homemade, buttered sourdough biscuits, gallons of whipped cream and enough crushed fresh strawberries to fill several good-sized trash cans.

We'd assemble it all on a specially painted door, slide it into the back of the van and drive veerrrrrrrryyyyyy slowly to Shamel Park.

And the work goes on.

For instance, that holiday hot dog you munch requires people to make the plans and the commitment, buy the hotdogs, buns, relish, mustard, napkins and other accessories and find folks to run the booth.

They set up and fire up the barbecue, decorate the booth, cook the dogs, sell them, keep things stocked, clean up the mess afterward, tear down the equipment, take it home, clean it and put it away (that was always the part I hated most!).

And just what do you do with five open jars of pickle relish on July 5?

On Independence Day, for every booth and every activity, it takes people willing to give up weeks of their time to provide the rest of us with one day of fun.

That's an old-fashioned Fourth of July. That's tradition. That's how it should be.

Thank you, American Legion and all your cohorts. Long may you reign.

Answer to Anonymous' comment: A waiter-waitress race is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the park.

Kathe Tanner is an award-winning reporter for The Tribune and The Cambrian. She also has written a column for The Cambrian since 1981. This one was published on June 29, 2006.

Yes, kids today do care about learning

2007-06-14T11:58:00.001-07:00

Anna’s a waif of a 10-year-old, with an innate sparkle that could ignite fireworks and a shy grin that makes you want to echo-smile from ear to ear in response.

Recently, after I met the Michel family, Anna snuggled up to her dad and listened intently as I asked him questions during a casual interview.

Paul Michel is the new superintendent of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The family was visiting the sanctuary’s southern gateway at San Simeon’s Coastal Discovery Center, seeing the Piedras Blancas Light Station and Hearst Castle and attending ceremonies at the castle’s newly remodeled visitor center.

Normally, I’d be reporting about what Paul said and his views on such topics as desalination plants, Davidson Seamount, the wreck of the Montebello, fishing, surfing and other issues in his work-a-day domain.

Later. This is about Anna.

She continued to watch me and listen, obviously making mental notes about something.

Finally, her mom, Bev, explained that the home-schooled child has an assignment to interview her grandmothers, ages 80 and 70.

Wow! What a great way to learn about history!

The Michels have an unusual household. For instance, they don’t have TV, preferring to have Anna and her mischievous younger brother Alex get news from newspapers — which can be put away when the stories get too intense or repetitive for young folks.

Paul and Bev also minimize at-home computer use, wanting their children to refine writing skills and penmanship at the same time.

I explained to Anna why I ask certain interview questions and what I hope to learn from the answers.

Then she started asking me some insightful questions of her own.

What a delightful change from the "shutters slamming shut behind the eyes" reaction one often gets from children, teens … and even some adults.

I told Anna about a questionnaire I prepared long ago to help pry memories from reluctant senior citizens.

Some people slough off questions about their lives. "I’m nobody important," they protest. "I don’t have anything interesting to say. And if I do, I don’t remember it."

My questionnaire seeks to overcome that informational dam with topics as diverse as "What did your mother pack in your school lunches?" and "What were your early homes built from, and who built them?" and "Did you have a pet, and if so, what?"

I also suggested other ideas, such as having a tea party for Grandma and other relatives or longtime friends.

Show them photos from long ago, and it can be amazing what recollections those pictures will trigger. The seniors often will spar with each other about who really is who in a photo and what they really were doing.

A video or audio recorder can capture those good- natured arguments and the priceless tales within.

I also asked Anna to send me her reports when they’re done.

Anna, Alex and other bright kids provide the decidedly upbeat answer to a vital question — do future generations really care about learning, or about the history of a house, a village, a nation … or a family?

You betcha.

That night, I thought what fun it could be to have Anna, Alex and our youngest grandkids all together at an event like Cambria’s ninth annual Heritage Day celebration on Sunday, June 24.

We’d bring some hoops to roll (or hula) around the Guthrie-Bianchini house, and play some Victorian-era games, to match the house. We’d share a picnic in the shade of the big trees and have a good, old-fashioned time.

No Xbox? Who cares? We’d have fun just being together. And we’d all be learning, too.

At the Castle ceremonies the next day, Anna greeted me with another incandescent smile, a big hug and a tightly folded piece of notebook paper.

As buddies often do, even across generational divides, we talked and giggled off and on for a couple of hours.

Later, I opened her paper.

It was a multicolored sketch of a waterway, pretty flowers and bees, with a note in her neat cursive writing:

"Dear Kathe, Thanks for being so friendly and welcoming. You inspired me. Your friend, Anna Michel."

And the same to you, dear Anna. Absolutely.

The smallest big world

2007-06-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

Published May 30, 2007

There's an old saw about Joe from Kansas, who was vacationing in Paris. While strolling down the Champs Élysées, he was astonished to see his stateside next-door-neighbor walking toward him. Joe expected to share a warm handshake, effusive greetings and maybe even a chance to hang out together for a while. But as his cool-as-a-cucumber neighbor strode along, he looked up, smiled a bit, offhandedly said "Hi, Joe," and kept right on walking into the next block and beyond.

Fortunately, when we've come upon Cambrians out of town, their greetings have been much friendlier.

Even casual acquaintances will usually exchange squeals of glee, big hugs and even changes in itinerary to spend time together.

North Coast residents get around, for sure. So having them wind up in the same spot at the same time -- even when they're not sharing a travel tour -- shouldn't be astonishing.

But, somehow, it always is. It's found treasure, the social equivalent of finding a $100 bill on the sidewalk, or pulling into a rare parking space that has lots of time on the meter.

We've unexpectedly found Cambrians at the Orange County Performing Art Center, at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, at restaurants in San Francisco or L.A. and in a host of other far-away places.

I'm sure we've shared more meals out of town with our beloved neighbors Richard and Christine than we have when we've been right across the street from each other. However, our recent chance encounter takes the cake.

We were at a college reception, cheering for granddaughter Kelsey as she received the coveted pin which proclaims that she is a nurse.

We think Kelsey's accomplishment is huge, especially because she and her hardworking husband, Jeremy, have two young daughters.

Years ago, I discovered that studying with two little kids in the house was tough bordering on impossible. Finding bubblegum in the hair or having a baseball fly through a (closed) window is not conducive to concentrating.

And I wasn't trying to learn anatomy, memorize symptoms or keep track of interactions between two obscure drugs. To say we're proud of our grad is understating the situ- ation by a whole bunch.

The college ceremony was long and the chairs hard, but the joy radiating from the proud new nurses more than made up for it.

The keynote speaker regaled the students and the rest of us with poignant and hilarious recollections about being a novice nurse, including her tale of treating her first patient and how she carefully administered a suppository -- into the man's nose.

A couple of the students spoke, including one chipper young man who ended his talk by proposing to his girlfriend. No pressure there, eh, asking her in front of 400 people? I'm sure she knew she risked being lynched if she said no. I wish them well and hope she knows what she's getting into.

After the ceremony, I suddenly felt an arm snake around my shoulders and turned to see our Cambria pal Stan Cooper.

My jaw dropped, and my eyes opened wide. I stammered a little ... "But ... Stan!"

He grinned, then growled one of Humphrey Bogart's most famous phrases: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine."

This wasn't Cookie Crock or Main Street Grill, after all. We were at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, 433 miles from home.

Stan and wife April Benham were at the ceremony to root for the lovely Morgan Murphy, their own granddaughter- nurse-grad. She lives in Reno, but several family members are Cambrians, including great-grandparents Boyd and Hazel Benham, who've lived here for four decades. (Sadly, Mr. Benham passed away Saturday, May 26.)

Now mine is not sharpest mental pencil in math class, but even I can figure those odds are pretty long -- two bright young women graduating in the same class of 30 in Nevada, each having immediate family members far away in the same small town on the Central California coast.

Small world? You bet (don't you dare start humming the Disney theme!).

And thank you, Stan. I'm really glad you didn't give me a Joe-style greeting. Yours was just so ... Cambria.