Sightlines

Everyman, a timely read

Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008. On the plane home from Oakland last Sunday I finished Philip Roth's slim volume (175 pages), "Everyman." What a little gem. And how timely...

The epigraph at the beginning is from Keats:  "Here where men sit and hear each other groan; / Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; / Where but to think is to be full of sorrow."

My brother recommended "Everyman" and it pushed me back in my seat. What an exquisite meditation on mortality.... Just the sort of thing to sink into after attending a memorial service for a dear friend. And to read at 30,000 feet...

Norman Rush's review in the Washington Post in 2006 was borrowed from Sartre: " Being and Nothingness." He said: "And virtuoso lyrical passages capture the protagonist's yearning for the strength and joy of his youth: 'Nothing could extinguish the vitality of that boy whose slender little torpedo of an unscathed body once rode the big Atlantic waves from a hundred yards out in the wild ocean all the way in to shore. Oh, the abandon of it, and the smell of the salt water and the scorching sun! Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea, an optical treasure so vast and valuable that he could have been peering through the jeweler's loupe engraved with his father's initials at the perfect, priceless planet itself -- at his home, the billion-, the trillion-, the quadrillion-carat planet Earth!'" Cheers.

Betty, Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Betty Webster,  my friend for almost 40 years, would have been 90 last Friday. But on New Year's Day she passed away. Pneumonia. "The old person's friend," as doctors like to say.

Yesterday I flew into Oakland, rented a car and drove to her house in the Berkeley Hills for her memorial service. Her house was overflowing with family and friends.  One man had just arrived from Japan and was flying back today.

One of the great stories about Betty is how she came to be married during WWII. Her brother suggested a fellow airman, Hap Draper, start corresponding with Betty--an avid writer. He did, and Betty responded. They started a relationship through the mail. When Hap asked for a photo, she sent  him this one.

Through their letters they fell in love. When they finally met, she flew into his arms and four days later they were married. It was 1943.

She followed him from base to base, around the country, as his assignments changed. Then he received orders to go to France. He was tail-gunner on a B-26 bomber.

In March, 1945, she received the following telegram: "The Secretary of War regrets to inform you that your husband, Howard L. Draper was killed in action in France on Feb. 25, 1945."  He'd been shot down. This photo shows the final crew.

Betty wrote about all this in a piece called, "Into the Wild Blue  Yonder," and she ended with:

"I have all the letters Hap wrote me, before we were married, when he was overseas. A record of expressed love that has sustained me for more than half a century.
     Love endures. I have remarried, divorced, raised three children, visited many countries, circled the word numerous times since those long ago days. Everywhere I have been Hap has been with me, sometimes sitting on the edge of the new moon, watching my antics with detached delight."

Betty was with all of us yesterday. Hap too. Cheers.

A Good View, A Good Read

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008. Sometimes an older movie is just the ticket. Take "An Affair to Remember." What a gem. This 1957 classic tells the story of a couple (Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr) who fall in love on an ocean liner bound for New York. Trouble is, they're both engaged--but not to each other....

They agree to meet in six months at the top of the Empire State Building. But something happens...

In the good reads department, I just finished Tim Egan's award-winning book, "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl." On the back of the book there is this description:

"John Steinbeck gave voice to those who fled the Dust Bowl in this masterpiece, Grapes of Wrath. This is the story of those who stayed and survived... ...and it is an extraordinary story of endurance and heroism."

As I read about the awful drought of the early-mid 1930's, and the horrendous dust storms that blotted out the sun, I savor our rain.

Mr. Egan is a local, writes for the NY Times, and has published several books, including "The Good Rain"--also a good read. Cheers. 

Gears and Beers

Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. Two discoveries recently: The Gear Works, and Brouwer's Cafe.

I needed pictures of gears for a PowerPoint presentation at work. I had some old rusty ones, but they weren't quite right, so a Google search turned up The Gear Works. A phone call to the VP for Marketing set me up for a tour. Fascinating--I love touring industrial sites. Sterling, the VP, described his company as a "boutique gear maker." Not large, by world standards, but high quality, with customers in China and India and all over the US.

He said business is booming because of the growth in energy services. "Anytime you have to take something out of ground, or get energy from wind or water, you need gears," he said.

They bring in steel from the midwest, then cut it in a sort of waterfall of oil, which of course lubricates, but more importantly, keeps the metal cool.

I took pictures as we walked around. One gear was at least five feet across.  Then he loaned me some smallish gears so I could shoot them at home. I arrayed the gears in different configurations, going for the theme of "synchronization." Got some serviceable images.

Brouwer's Cafe was today's delightful discovery for lunch. Billed as a "little bit of Belgium in Seattle" it reportedly has the largest selection of beers in the city. We had a "Kwak"--a Belgian brew described on the menu as a "strong amber." Delicious. And their beef barley soup was terrific. Cheers.