Picasso at the Lapin Agile (play review)

"Picasso at the Lapin Agile" was written by one of our foremost modern comedians Steve Martin. If for no other reason than that, I was interested in seeing the play currently playing at the Chautauqua season tickets there was a pretty good chance that we'd see it. Just who would go with us was a question almost up to the curtain. Turned out that the traditional dinner before the play was transformed to a celebratory dinner to mark two very important tests that Tiffany finished, Then we had to decide which 2 of their family would go with us. Ed and Timothy won out.

The jist of the play is that Einstein and Picasso, being contemporaries, happen to meet and get acquainted at this Parisian bar - The Agile Rabbit. There they discuss art, physics, (naturally) and what should be the appropriate 3rd point of a world-changing culture which has those two points as beginning points. There are a lot of philosophy jokes and a lot of intense discussion where these armchair philosophers attempt to prove their branch is the best. The humor is either slapstick or obscure. After a "red herring' candidate for that last corner of the triangle, a messenger from the future who looks oddly enough like a young Elvis Presley drops in, the play sort of winds up rather than coming to an end.

I personally don't think it's Steve's best work although our players appeared to do their best to bring life to this slightly dead play. I'm proud of Tim for actually staying awake through the whole play.

La Sierra Ward 2009 Luau

The following pictures of the La Sierra Ward 2009 Luau are presented without significant comment for your enjoyment. By left clicking on a picture you can get the full sized image and by right-clicking it you can download it to your computer for editing and printing. All copyrights are released for personal use. Special thanks to Carolyn Loveridge and Jeremy Pinnegar for assisting in the picture taking.

Enjoy!

Arnold

End of show

Fall is in the air (and in the kitchen)

One of the speakers at a recent symposium for Parkinson's Disease said there are only two types of people with PD - those who have fallen and those who haven't fallen YET. Even though I've had a couple of minor falls, I didn't really think I needed to worry. I was even showing off to Carolyn the various ways we've been taught as well as those ways I've discovered on my own of preventing falls as much as possible and preventing serious injury when they do happen.

Then after putting something away in the laundry room I was crossing to the kitchen table. Suddenly, my legs and feet took over. With no control from me they started going faster and faster until I grabbed the kitchen counter to slow myself down and get control. Unfortunately, grabbing a point like that didn't stop me but did have the effect of swinging my momentum around that point and slam me into the counter. Fortunately, I didn't break any dishes or bones. I have a small bruise on my head and a very sore spot on my butt where I took the main impact of the fall. The worst effect it has had on me is to effectively wipe out my self confidence in walking without a walker.

Welcome to my life.

A Tree Grows in Carmichael - not

Five or six years ago, the Sacramento Tree Foundation gave us a professional consultation regarding which trees would be the most appropriate for our shade, fruit, and protection needs. We planted five trees based on their recommendation, five very different trees. And we've had five very different results.

The river birch, closest to the street has had tremendous growth. The red bud and gecko havae been very slow growing up until this year but we may finally be breaking through the hard pan. Of the two remaining birch trees we've had mixed success. One is still doing about as well as the trees in the back while the other looks like it may have died except for some of the stringers along the former

As you can see, Carolyn has sawn off the top of the birch leaving only about 3 feet of trunk and one small stringer that is also about 3 feet long. Her intention was to use the trunch as a lever and handle to pull what appears to be the root ball of a dead tree. However, after realizing how hard it is to get the root ball out, she decided to just dig enough to plant a crepe myrtle and tie them all together. Hopefully, at least one will grow.

They are Us and We are Them

Carolyn warned me yesterday that she had put a political sign on our front lawn. If I disapproved, we'd talk about it. After looking at it from a distance

and from close up

I can't see anything distasteful or disrespectful. In fact, I think that if all state employees would put out a placard and all county and city employees do the same, I think we'd all be impressed by this "hidden" population that we all like to complain about. This year especially with the economy in the doldrums, it is politically popular to raise the cry of lower taxes, fewer services, and fewer government employees. Somehow there is this idea that laying off government workers will strengthen the economy while laying off workers in the private sector will weaken the economy. The fact is that most government workers are essential, they are doing a job that must be done and if not by the government, by whom?

I haven't mentioned the federal government employees. I think many of us have this picture in our heads of all these employees coming from the state of Federalania with the desire to impose the greatest burden possible on our state. But aren't they really also us?

I think that before we look for across the board cuts for government employees at any level, we need to evaluate what they do, whether that action really needs to be done, and at which level it will be best done.

Who's watching you? And do you care?

I really don't like to talk politics on my blog because there are so many people who immediately turn off as soon as politics is mentioned or, even worse, when some key word or phrase is included. For example, if I quote Rush Limbaugh about something, anything, certain readers will stop reading out of principle rather than listening to what I am quoting. Likewise, use of the term ACLU will raise the temperature of some readers who will then stop reading for health reasons.

But today I would like to applaud what the ACLU of Northern California is doing in trying to increase awareness in Facebook users as to how much information they are distributing to the world every time they take a Facebook survey or even every time a friend takes a survey. They have done this by (you guessed it) creating a survey for you to take. Of course, you have to be a member of Facebook to take their survey but then you have to be a member of Facebook for Facebook to reveal all your information. You do NOT have to be a member or even a sympathyser of ACLU to take the survey.

To take the survey simply click here: http://apps.facebook.com/aclunc_privacy_quiz/.)

If you are a member of Facebook and happen to agree with ACLU-Northern California's take on this breach of confidentiality, please let Facebook know. I think we all agree we don't need the government to solve all our problems.

ACLU-NC's recommendations to Facebook include:

• Change default privacy settings so that quizzes and other third party applications run by a user's friends do not have access the information on a user's profile without the user's opt-in consent.
• Simplify and improve privacy controls to give users the ability to decide what personal information gets shared with friends and others through Facebook.
• Require that third party applications like quizzes list the categories of user data they will access and allow users to view this list. Prevent applications from having access to information that has not been listed, and notify users if an application's data categories change before allowing access to this additional information.

And thanks for reading this all the way through.

Measurable success

I think I've described the book request system in Sacramento requests for books before. Whether from the "home" library or some other branch in the system, book requests are entered into a centralized database. Each morning before the opening of each library, the items in the database that correspond to that library are printed. Then people like Pam and I scour the shelves for these requests. When we started doing this on a regular basis about 2 years ago, it was a rare day when we had more than 200 books on the list. Pam and I almost always completed the list in less than 2 hours.

Now it is fairly common to have 270 to 290 books on the list and once a week it will actually go over. As you might expect Pam and I try harder but continually come close to or exceed 3 hours. I think it's about time for another volunteer.

Just whose book is it anyway?

Carolyn and I were tending our youngest grandson the other day. At 15 months he's right at that age where he's leaving the stage of total dependence to to control of the world. The following picture is just one example of his trying to do things his way, not realizing (and maybe not caring) that in the process of controlling the pages, he's making it difficult or impossible for Grandma to continue reading.

Kind of reminds me of all the forces at work on Health Care Insurance reform or Health Care Payment reform. Somehow everyone confuses that with Health Care reform and goes off half cocked about "don't touch my Health Care". Except for those of us in an HMO type of plan, I don't' know anyone who really LIKES the insurance side of Health Insurance. But like little Camdan here, just too busy trying to get my way to really understand the problem.

A sign of the times

A couple of days ago as I was driving out of our dead end street, I noticed this sign posted at the end. I had seen a few days earlier that someone (for at least the 2nd time) had knocked down our usual sign post. It took weeks to get the replacement sign the last time so I can understand why one of our neighbors took the initiative.

The lettering on this ad hoc sign is a little hard to read because its on brown cardboard which isn't quite as reflective but also because we're laughing about it.

It does make you wonder if the county transportation people are going to use the same excuses this time - understaffed, overworked, unclear on the concept of a county transportation department.

A tip of the hat to Microsoft's Vista

I've heard the usual anecdotes about Vista but really didn't have a choice when we recently purchased a new computer. It came with Vista only. Didn't even have an office suite. We had to get that separately. I'm still trying to figure out Vista's file explorer. But just this week I had two positive run-ins with Vista that I'd like to share.

Situation 1:
I have been using an HP iPac PDA for nigh onto 8 years. From time to time I manage to let it's battery go so low that it loses it's memory. But because I've always backed up the data to my PC I've always been able to restore all the data and most of the programs. I placed this item among the important programs to switch to the new computer.

I actually found the CD that came with the iPac and proceeded to run it. Right away it warned me that I'd have to use Outlook 2002 which I didn't have. Then it pointed out that this was on the CD and began loading it. When that was complete, it started installing the syncronizing program. Suddenly there was a "ker-thunk" noise indicating an installation error. The syncronizing program was incompatible and wouldn't run with Vista. Then the error message gave a URL of Microsoft Windows' Mobile Device Center software download site.

I downloaded this free software, installed and ran it. I was instructed to connect my PDA to the computer. It identified it and began communicating with it. I had to configure Outlook 2002 to sync to it but otherwise there were no further problems.

Situation 2:
This one was even more amazing. Our old HP Laserjet 6p has been a workhorse for at least the past 15 years. But I was worried that it couldn't move to the new computer which has no parallel port. Then I came across a software disc for a parallel to USB cable. I don't remember ever buying such a cable but it didn't matter since I couldn't find the cable. A couple of weeks later I found the cable but by then had lost the software.

Frustrated, I thought it couldn't hurt to see what happens if I plugged in the cable. I expected not a thing would happen. I plugged the cable into the 6p Printer and into a USB port in the laptop. Without any more effort on my part, Vista detected the new connection, detected the type of printer on the line and loaded the necessary drivers. A 15 year-old printer connected with no additional software to the latest version of Windows.

A gift that has kept on giving

When we bought our house there was a 3 foot by 8 foot opening in the cement outside our kitchen window which otherwise would have contributed to the beginning of a small patio. What was curious to us was that this hole was filled with lava rock, making it useless as part of a patio or as a planting box. We pretty much ignored it for a couple of years except for spraying weed killer every few months and pulling out the dead weeds a couple of weeks afterward.

It took our son Lee to finally actually sit down and rock by rock remove all the lava rocks, dumping them at the south side of the house where they at least aren't hurting any little feet. After the rocks were removed and the resulting hole covered with a weed barrier, Carolyn dumped several bags of playground quality sand into the hole. I had my doubts but they appear to have been all for nothing.


One of the most favorite outdoor activities for our grandchildren is playing in Grandma's sandbox. Depending on the heat and the intensity of the sun, the grandchildren may add to the experience by running the hose into the sand box for a few minutes. Since it doesn't drain well, there is the danger of making things too muddy.


You'll notice in these pictures that Tim and Jake are fully accustomed to the whole experience of climbing in and playing with the sand while Camdan is still a little hesitant to leave the known world of the concrete.


Having the concrete pathway helps keep most of the sand in the sandbox. We simply sweep most of it back in and spray the rest. We can usually get help from the kids with both of those activities.


Meanwhile the adults enjoy the fun of having the kids out of the way but totally in sight.

It's a small, small world

Last week as we traveled to the family camp reunion in Utah, we took the opportunity of visiting some dear friends of ours. Notice, I didn't say dear OLD friends because we've known them so long that we can't really see that they've aged any. I did say DEAR because anyone who will welcome two dusty, sweaty travelers in their home and hold up dinner for 2 1/2 hours is certainly worthy of that appellation.

We were sorry they found it in their best interest to move from Long Beach several years ago but they truly look like they have found happiness in Murray, Utah being much closer to their kids.
Because we have stayed close to the Mauss's, it wasn't a total surprise when two other people showed up at the delayed dinner, two young people who we also have known most of our lives - Chrissie (Krissy?, Cryssy?) Mauss, their youngest child; and Stephen Baldwin, a nephew on Carolyn's side of the family. Although they aren't related, it feels just as unusual as if a niece and a nephew hit it off and started going together.

I couldn't tell whether they are an item or just good friends but in any case they make a handsome couple and we wish them the best of luck.