Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

Farewell to the last of who I consider to be the three great directors of the 20th century, the others being Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini.

Ingmar created works of incredible depth with a timeless connection to humanity. My favorites: The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

A Fungus Among Us

My sister, noting that I have lived all these 42 years without a mushroom farm of my very own, brought me one. This particular fungus colony is of the variety that we lovingly call "Shitake". It is not a new farm, she has used it to make a "fruiting" (note the use of mushroom farming lingo already pervading my vocabulary) and she said it worked well and gave forth plenty of Shitake mushrooms. Note, no DNA testing was done, but she THINKS they were Shitakes. She ate them, anyhow, so...

Now she is passing the torch to me, so that I may carry on the Shitake lineage. This farm is a strange looking thing, even for something associated with mushrooms. A lump of "something" that the mushrooms like to grow on, she said it started out white but has since cured into a big brown lumpy mass of pulpy mushroom paradise.

After waiting the three weeks in between fruiting (almost there), I am to begin the process of re-growing the Shitakes. The process sounds complicated, but she assures me it isn't. It involves water and indirect sunlight. Which is strange to me, since I had always thought mushrooms needed darkness and...well...

The Difference Between A Professional...

...and an amateur photographer, is that the amateur shows you ALL his pictures.

The Sand And The Waves

I'm going to get morbid here for a minute. Don't be scared, I've just been thinking.

When I die, I would like my funeral to be a party. I want all my friends there (don't make me come and get you). I want rustic food and wine served to all (ok, except me, I won't have a use for it by then).

I also want music. I'd be happy knowing you were comfortable.

I do not want vapid speeches about how kind or friendly I was, although you can mention that I loved my family very much. I don't want a long boring service in a musty building, in fact, have it outdoors if it's in the summer, with Hawaiian shirts and sun dresses.

I just want you all to talk. Talk about anything, but mostly about our time together, and what it meant to you. Tell each other stories, because if I care about anything, it's knowing that I made your lives a little more enjoyable and fulfilling through shared experiences.

I'd be happy knowing you laughed more than you cried.

And when it is over, spread my ashes on a nice beach somewhere, perhaps Pentwater. Heather and I both spent lazy summer vacations there playing on the shore of Lake Michigan in our youths, long before we met.

I'd be happy knowing I was on that beach with all those good memories, and not in some old scary cemetery that means nothing to me.

But let's not dwell on that any more right now. The present time is for life. And I hope I have a happy long time left before I am feeling the waves of Lake Michigan for the last time.

Unternehmen: Wacht Am Rhein

My father was in the Battle of the Bulge. Jokes about expanding waistlines notwithstanding, this was the bloodiest battle in American history, even topping Gettysburg where the casualties on both sides counted as American. It came near the end of Hitler's regime in WWII, and took place in the frozen Ardennes forest in Belgium, during the coldest winter in 50 years. And it lasted a month and a half.

My father never talked much about it, at least not to me. Maybe I was too young. Or maybe it was too painful to remember. But as an adult who has done some reading about this battle, I now realize some of what he must have gone through, and it wasn't good. Four thinly-spread American divisions found themselves in a surprise assault that threw them into the teeth of 30 German divisions from four armies. Among these soldiers were members of the elite Waffen SS, the finest troops that Hitler had. My father was in the 2nd Infantry Division, tasked with stopping the German 6th SS Panzer Army at Elsenborn Ridge, which they did.

When it was over, there were more than 76,000 US casualties. Germany suffered at least twice that many. The result was that the German armies were devastated and they never recovered. The European war went on for another grueling four months as the US entered Germany and the Soviets destroyed the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, but after The Bulge, the German defeat was inevitable.

Sliding Into Home

I just recently finished scanning the remaining slides for my family. Last night I designed the label for the DVD (pictured), and now I am in final editing of the scanned slides, doing corrections on color balance, contrast, etc. So, the end is near! I can't wait to present these to my brothers and sister at the reunion...

Outside Meat

Zach was about three, and we were in the meat aisle at the store. Upon seeing packages of various cuts of beef, wrapped up in the cooler, he said: "Dad, those cows must be sad, because their meat is on the outside".

Two Of A Different Kind

Coco displays a look of genuine bewilderment at the scolding she is getting for barking her fool head off at our teasing squirrel again. She has it out for this squirrel in the worst way. The squirrel climbs the tree and taunts Coco for hours, working her into a lathering fit of rabid craziness. Coco shrieks, growls, barks, and jumps four feet in the air trying to score that rodent. Intervention is often required, as Coco would not interrupt her quest to get this squirrel with anything, even food or sleep.

Ironically, the teasing squirrel, scrappy, black and fluffy with a big bushy tail, bears more than a passing resemblance to it's would-be hunter. Life is funny like that.

News Of The World

The Polite Gargoyle

The word "gargoyle" comes from the French "gargouille", meaning "throat", because originally these carvings were placed at the outlets of rain gutters and made a gurgling sound. Nowadays they look much cuter and do much less gurgling.

Yummy Chaos

I go about cooking a little differently than most people, I think. And my method of grocery shopping is very disconcerting to those not accustomed to it. I just go and get whatever looks good, without a menu plan or indeed any pre-conceived notion of what I want to make. Then when it's time to cook I look at what I have and just make something. It's a good way to go, I think, because you never get crippled by a missing ingredient, and you always buy what's good and fresh. I am a firm believer in cooking meals with simple ingredients: fresh vegetables, olive oil, legumes, herbs, etc. In that regard I guess I am a little like a painter, who creates different things using the same basic palette of paints. To others it often looks like a chaotic mess of a system, but it works for me.

Here is an example. This is a South Indian curry that I made from things lying around, basically rice and chick peas with spices, covered in a roasted chili-tomato sauce. It was pretty fast and very very tasty. And of course, healthy stuff. I don't want to give the impression that everything I do works though, when you wing it sometimes you can really produce a stinker. But the trick is to just move on and learn from it, and as the years go by I find that I make fewer "mistakes" now than I used to.

So, here's to a special kind of "blatant experimentation rooted in a firm familiarity of the basics". Does that make any sense at all? If it does, we're all in trouble.

.608

The Tigers have the best record in baseball again. At the risk of scaring the superstitious among my Motown brethren, I think we have a shot of getting into the World Series again. My brother and I went to Game 2 last year (the infamous Kenny Rogers hand smudge game). Turns out it was the only game we won. But we have a great team by all accounts and I think there is a chance...we'll come back to this thought in September.

A Pamphlet That Will Live In Infamy

My realtor is a very nice lady, but she is not the sharpest tool in the shed. On our home listing she put the statement "walk into the dining room and you'll feel like your in wine country". We had her fix that, and a few other similar errors. Now she comes up with a nice fancy pamphlet for potential buyers to take home, and on the cover she describes our subdivision as "infamous". Who doesn't know what that word means? People are going to think we had a triple homicide in our hood. Me thinks we will not be handing those nice fancy pamphlets out.

The Severed Thumb Trick, And Other Gags

My father was a great guy. He could fix anything, he was a great dad to six kids, he learned to ski at 62 years old. But I think what I liked best about him was his sense of humor. There is no doubt where I got mine from. He liked telling stories and jokes, and we used to watch comedy movies together, from the Three Stooges to the Pink Panther.

He was known especially for his sight gags. Here you can see him imitating a car accident victim using an old truck in a junk yard as a prop. He was also fond of standing next to someone who was closing a car trunk and pretending his thumb was caught in the slam. He could even do that trick where you use the tip of your other thumb imitate a severed digit. Good stuff...as kids, you can just imagine how much we loved that, and as an adult, I still chuckle when I think about it. I also consider it my fatherly duty to pass this joviality on to my children, and I am all to happy to oblige.

If only I could master the severed thumb trick...

Pressing The Red Button On The Big Machine

It's a little difficult getting film developed nowadays. If you are looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything other than "Two sets of 4x6 prints", look out because you are in for trouble. I don't take much film, being solidly converted to digital now. But when I do, I just want the film developed, I don't want prints. I take the developed film back home and scan the pictures I want to keep. But the clerks at places like CVS, who have been given instructions on how to press the big red button on the fully-automated Kodak C-41 developer and not much else, have no idea how to handle a request like that.

After being turned down by Target (my film cartridge was returned after about a week and a half with "Service Not Provided" stamped on it), and with photography shops that develop film getting fewer and far between, I turned to CVS. The perky girl at the counter looked at me like I had a monkey mask on when I told her I just wanted development and no prints. After a thorough explanation, it finally dawned on her that she could run the negative strip through the C-41 developer but not through the printer. She proclaimed that she could do that, and told me it would take about ten minutes. I got the distinct feeling that she was still mulling my request over in her head, wondering how or why anyone would want a developed film strip with no prints to show Grandma.

After ten minutes the film was developed. She rolled it up and gave it to me with a funny look on her face (my monkey mask must have still been in place). I asked her how much I owed her for it and she almost laughed out loud. With a charming smile, looking at me as if I were a child, she said "I'm not going to CHARGE you for that, silly. You're so cute!"

Black Like Ink, Strong Like Bull

We drank this wine over the weekend. It was good. Dark, dark...and complex. It's a '96 from Spain, and it was all I could do to wait the prescribed ten years to drink it. I tried to make this picture mirror the wine's personality, if that is possible.

July 23rd, 1926

It's my mom's birthday today...Wherever you are, Happy Birthday, Mom! Here she is in 1962 (on the right), having fun with friends.

Brothers In Arms

Two great events are about to collide: family reuinion at Pentwarer, and my completion of scanning the family slides. Here's my brother and I on the end of the old Pentwater pier, found in the last cartridge of slides.

You're Lucky I Don't Have Your Forwarding Address

The previous owners of our cozy little house left us a whole collection of old paint. In order to dispose of paint it must be properly dried out and that task was beyond these people obviously. So we are finally getting around to drying all these tacky colors (Pimp Caddie Aqua, Bordello Red, etc...) out in the back yard for impending disposal. Paint dries out very slowly, and meanwhile we are treated to a symphony of toxic odors that keeps the dogs at least 30 feet away at all times. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any mosquitoes around lately either...

Bathing In Cake

We had Maddie's first birthday party last weekend, and as you can see, it was a hit with the girl of honor.

Eclectica

Of my many odd habits and opinions, one of the most visible is my distaste for things that match. I hate sets of matching anything, actually, whether it be motorcycles with matching side cars or coordinated sweat suits. This extends to dishes. I have all kinds of serving bowls, plates, and even olive pit dishes, and none of them match. This is on purpose. I guess it comes from my love of the authentic, the rustic. Things, all things, are to use, and when you use things they break. So eventually, nothing matches. I think that is the root of it.

Matching also means you are trying too hard, and that always seems lame to me. So I try really hard NOT to match :)

Life In A Box

A curious thing is happening. I have been putting the lion's share of my life's accumulation of "stuff" into plastic storage boxes lately, and this strange behavior isn't showing any signs of stopping. I don't know if this is some kind of suddenly activated pack-rat instinct, or the fact that the house is on the market, but I am boxing like Joe Louis. I figure it will make the move easier, and allows me an opportunity to filter out all the crap I can possibly throw away or sell now, instead of at the future (as yet to be determined) new house.

Whenever I look at anything in the house now, I just automatically go into thinking about what shape of box it would fit in. As a bonus, I am getting really knowledgeable about the inventory of aisle 16 at Target.

Wheelchair Sex

Heather is an Occupational Therapist. In simple terms, she helps people who have medical conditions that hinder them regain the skills necessary to live their lives. Often even simple tasks cannot be performed, say, after a stroke, and she helps them to retrain themselves or use new methods to achieve the same results.

She made the mistake once of telling me that in school they learned how to teach sex positions to people who are wheelchair-bound. This of course has provided me with endless amusement (and guilt, for making light of the disabled), and although she has never actually had to teach this particular process, that does not deter me from asking her every day if her patient that day required it. The answer is always "no".

I keep hoping, though, because that would be the mother of all therapy stories.

"The Bogs Are Darking"

Not a dire warning of the sun setting over the moors, just a cute way for Heather to say that the dogs were barking :)

The Devil's Fire

If you know anything about me, then know you that I love hot food. My spice cabinet and my vegetable basket are both full of chilies from around the world: Jalapeños, Hungarians, Thai, Serranos, Dundicuts, Japones, Anchos, Cascabels, de Arbols, Scotch Bonnets...the list is long and hot. I mostly use them sparingly in everyday cooking, they give almost everything (even chocolate) a certain subtle zing when applied carefully. But I also use them liberally (some say sadistically) in some foods, and they can be powerful attention-getters in that guise.

There is a scale of chili hotness, developed by one Wilbur Scoville, to rate the various chilies with respect to each other. Capsicum is the chemical that gives hot peppers their heat and the Scoville scale is pretty much just a subjective rating of capsicum level. At the bottom end of the scale is the nearly capsicum-less bell pepper (zero Scoville Units). Jalapeños are about 2500-8000 SU. Thai chilies weigh in at 50,000-100,000 SU. Note that there is a range because chilies vary wildly in hotness even within the same variety.

At the top of the scale, sitting firmly in tongue-scorching, brain-pickling terrain, is the mighty Naga Jolokia chili from India. This bad boy crashes through the roof of the scale at over ONE MILLION Scoville Units. Better put on some protective fire gear if you are thinking of doing battle with the Naga.

Habañeros, the hottest chili available in these parts (and former king of the heap before they decided to measure the nagas) comes in at up to 577,000 SU. Still incredibly hot, you will not be disappointed by these orange fiery beauties. They have a searing, sharp heat, that comes on slowly at first and then jumps you like a bandito. Just remember: there is the heat of 100 jalapeños in one habañero. As the fire builds and your mouth becomes numb, you begin to wonder if you will survive the assault. After about a half hour of pain, you are left with a warm glowing heat that stays with you long after the adrenalin rush runs out. Eating an habañero whole is one sure way to prove to yourself that you are still alive.

So, love chilies, but respect them. And next time you are about to bite into a bell pepper, just remember that there is a naga in there somewhere, just waiting to strike.

Scrappy To-Do

Heather called me just after I left for work Friday morning, all excited about the dogs. Apparently they got into a drop-down, drag-out scrapping brawl with each other, right there in the kitchen. The instigator seems to have been Coco, of course, and the subject of the brawl was most likely a scrap of dog treat, somehow missed before, found on the dog bed. She said it was pretty terrifying, and Maddie started to cry. In a minute it was over, and the fur settled. After a brief separation, our carnivorous combatants were friends again. So all is quiet at home...for now.

The Spinwelder Dentist

We did some crazy things as youngsters. I think we fed off each others wackiness too. My brother Brian, friend Jay, and myself had a little club called Force Four. I can't remember who number Four was offhand. Probably the "Red Shirt".

As far as I can remember, the main charter of Force Four was to think of ways to bilk the neighborhood kids out of their pocket change. Or at least endanger them beyond all reason in some way.

There was the "Casino" we made, a rigged cardboard box with a bike roulette wheel mounted on top. During operation, Brian would be inside to ensure that the odds remained firmly on the side of "the house". There were even holes that could be opened up to pass the proper cards to the proper person at the proper time. We acquired some serious coin from this venture before being forced to shut down by lack of new meat.

We knocked on doors in the neighborhood and sold some "newspapers" we found in a sack behind our house. Actually they were ad inserts, supposed to be free.

We used a spinwelder (a toy that was designed to heat up plastic rods to weld them together) as a dental "drill" on a poor neighborhood boy. I think we also threw alum in his mouth once.

Amazing that we had any other friends at all.

Kodachrome

"They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day..."

Immersed as we are in the raging digital age of photography, it seems almost as though film never existed. We hardly remember conserving pictures due to film's cost, we shoot hundreds of pictures nowadays with reckless abandon.

But there, sitting in the dark closets and attics of America, are millions upon millions of old negatives, slides, and reels of film. Forgotten, they slowly fade into oblivion. Perhaps we drag some of them out every ten years or so, looking for that one certain picture of grandma sitting on a horse. But largely they are unloved.

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to bring my father's vast collection of old slides into the modern age by doing high-resolution scans of them and I plan to give each family member a DVD of them at reunion this year.

The amazing thing I am discovering is that not all slide film is created equal. My father typically used Kodachrome film, and that is a good thing because the old K'Chrome slides look AMAZING! They seem to have retained every shade of their glorious rich color and razor sharpness. This longevity is well known for Kodachrome, and it is glaring when you compare these wonderful old slides with others where my father used a different film, such as Ektachrome. These tend to be very faded, or worse, color shifted; some so badly that they look completely red or blue.

Kodachrome is very complicated to develop, and with the advent of digital cameras, it is now all but extinct. There is one color lab in the world left that can develop it. But once it was the reigning glory of the film world. You don't name state parks and write songs about mediocre film, after all.

So, to the list of everything I am already thankful to my father for, add his use of the best film around for saving memories. Thanks, Dad!

A Viking Geek?

I wonder what the Norwegian King Harald Bluetooth would have thought about a short-range microwave radio communication system being named after him, due to his skill at uniting disparate tribes? I think he would dig it. I know I would. So, anytime you want to name something like that after me, go right ahead.

I got a Bluetooth headset for my birthday. I must say, I had reservations about the stigma. I didn't want to be "one of those guys" as Ingrid says. I decided to only wear it when I was in the car, it is after all, required by law if you are going to talk on the phone while driving around here, and I have such a long drive that I would go crazy without talking to someone.

But then I discovered how incredibly handy this thing is. I guess I didn't realize how many times I've tried to talk on the phone while doing other things (bike riding, assembling play sets, doing dishes, etc). The headset makes that kind of thing incredibly easy, it's almost freaky how you don't even feel the thing on your head. So I have started to expand my usage schedule, including "around the house" in my list of acceptable places to use the headset.

I am still not brave enough to wear it outdoors in public, but we'll see how that goes. Could be that convenience will win out again and I'll be "one of those guys" after all.

Green Stuff

Big Blue Pools Of Wonder

Not Surprisingly, She Likes Corn!

Coco, With A Price On Her Head

Birthday Ice Cream

Maddie 1.0

Madison is one year old today!!! Happy birthday little cutie!!! You have changed our lives in only 365 fast, fun-filled days, and we can't wait to see what the next 365 days bring!!! We love you!!!

In The Lime Light

My whole family likes eating limes. And lemons. I mean, we can just eat them. Yes, they are sour, but we love sour. The sourer, the betterer. Even Z and Madds have inherited it. So there must be a "love of knock-my-socks off sourness" gene, and we have it.

"Not String, Precious, But Not Nothing..."

I have been reading books to Zach at bedtime, one chapter or so at a time. He likes the classics, we have finished "kid versions" of Moby Dick and War Of The Worlds. Now we're reading The Hobbit (not a kid version) and he loves it. As expected, Gollum is his favorite character, and he really likes when I do my best to imitate the slimy little creature's voice. He loves the line in the title above, because it's really creepy how Gollum begins to realize that Bilbo has his ring, and he won't stop asking "what has it got in its pocketses?". He gets giggly chills every time we revisit the part where Gollum realizes his ring is gone and that is what is in Bilbo's pocket.

Basking In Glow Of The Grill

This was dinner yesterday, along with a flinty pinot grigio. I coated the tilapia with smoked Spanish paprika, orange zest, and lime juice.

Not-So-Short Stop

This is your lovable blogger, back in 1976. I used to play up to ten hours of baseball a day. I would ignore my parent's calls for dinner until they physically came and dragged me back home from the field. Baseball was my life.

How Not To Frame A Group Portrait

I think the subject of this picture is the ceiling lamp...but I could be wrong. The guys on bottom are drowning, you can't even crop your way out of this one. Just for good measure, it's crooked too. Don't know who took it, and I'm sure I never will, but was this person standing on a ladder? Oh, and when you use bounce-flash off the ceiling, best to leave that ceiling out of the shot. Other than those nits...well composed.

My Ephemeral Arteries

Life is so short. What a cliché, but true, true, true. Do you ever have a fear of lying on your death bed and wishing you would have done something that you somehow never did? Or perhaps a whole mess of somethings? Well, I have a fear of just lying on my death bed. But beyond that, I would hate to have that feeling. As Conan said, "Time enough for rest in the grave". Which I guess was lately translated by the savvy Nike marketing machine as "Just do it". I wonder if they gave Conan credit. That's Conan of Cimmeria, by the way, not NBC.

So what can you do to avoid this last-minute, full-of-regrets situation? It's easy to just picture yourself changing your life so that you scale Himalayan peaks and swim the Amazon River with anacondas every other weekend. But actually getting out and doing these things in this McDonald's, NBC, internet, waffle house, lawn mowing, dog-walking, diaper-changing world is very hard. Our lives are loaded up with inertia that has to be overcome for anything different to happen.

We have been doing some really fun things, things that challenge us and things that we will remember, even on our respective death beds. But they are very difficult to set up and execute, they require enormous resolve. How can we make them happen more often and keep our jobs and homes?

One way is to lower our expectations of what constitutes a death-bed remembering-worthy memory. We can be Zen about it. You can have great moments at the park. Or the mall, I guess. You don't always have to be out in the wild, facing challenges that would scare Sir Edmund. You can have little adventures within range of the cell phone towers. I guess it depends on what satisfies our internal longing for adventure.

I just know that I don't remember the last time I was at the mall, but I can recall with absolute crystal clarity the very moment that we realized that we were almost out of water in the wilds of the Grand Canyon, and it was hot as Hades and there was no shade and the nearest water was, BIG MAYBE, a hard unknown hike from where we were. And it would be up to us to save ourselves. And saving ourselves gave us all something we will never forget. Try that at the library.

Challenging myself. I guess that's what does it for me. I need to feel that I am face to face with something that will put me to the test, for real. And if I pass the test, I will know myself anew, I will see that I really am alive, and capable. And if I fail, well, I guess I will have learned something as well, which I can muddle over as I fly to the nearest trauma center in a jet helicopter. If I am lucky.

That is not to say there are not memorable moments in everyday life. There are, and those moments are what this blog is really about for me. What I record here are mostly the little, humble things. What silly thing Zach did. Heather on a swing. Why we want to strangle Coco this time.

I think that we need both kinds of moments. A few terrifying or challenging or exhilarating times that test us and we remember them like they are etched on glass. And many, many small ones that add up to something really big and wonderful, and maybe it's that big wonderful thing that we remember in our last moments after all.

Airborne

My dad was a superhero to me.

Just Hanging Out

Red Hat Girl

Charles Mears, Rolling Over In His Grave

Mears State Park, Pentwater, 1983. We had gone to Colorado skiing the previous winter, hence the "Winter Park" shirt. This was a seriously fun trip. Our first camping adventure with no parents, so we pretty much owned the place.

Morocco In Royal Oak

We love to eat outside, some Mediterranean dish accompanied by wine under the summer clouds. Friends & family are, of course, the most essential ingredients to these feasts.

Through The Tubes

Yours Truly, coaxing blues sounds from the Les Paul, Circa 2001.

Shake It Like A...

Nan gave me a Polaroid camera and a bunch of unexposed film, so I engaged in a brief burst of fun shooting all my mammals with reckless abandon. I think they all liked the quaint noises, looks and film ejection sequence of the camera, a very different device than I usually bother them with.

Ice Cream Road Trip

Complete With Admirers

My dad giving a speech in Toluca, Mexico, 1964.

Dashing

Looking Up

Maddie admires her reflection on the bottom side of our shiny bistro table.

Two Wheels, Ten Speeds, And More Freedom

Zach got a new bike! He helped me put it together (to save the $10 charge) and off he went! It's his first multi-speed bike, and it took a little scary riding to get used to not having the reverse-pedal brakes, but he's an expert now.

21,529,464. And Then, No More.

It was, of course, never really named "Beetle". Volkswagen "Type 1" was its official designation. Whatever you chose to call it though, this car changed the world.

The Beetle was made in enormous numbers for 65 years, in plants all over the world. More than 21 million of them rolled off assembly lines and right into people's hearts. They carried folks of all walks of life to work and play, and millions are still on the road.

From the Beetle's shadowy beginnings as Hitler's "People's Car" to it's adoption as the unofficial car of the hippie generation and beyond, you could always count on the fact that they were making these cute round little "Bugs" somewhere in the world. That all ended on July 30th 2003, as the last one (dressed in in Aquarius Blue with wide whitewalls) rolled off the line at the Puebla, Mexico plant, accompanied by a mariachi band and a somber mood.

It is difficult to imagine the impact this little rear-engined car has had on cultures across the world since it first appeared. I think VW's own final ad for the car said it best:

"It's incredible that a car this small leaves such a large void".