BEST OF: Small world at a rest stop

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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.