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.

BEST OF: With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy ...

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?

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

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

“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

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

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.