Our Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury was windy, cool and overcast this morning, which was fine with me, because all this warm, sunny  English weather was starting to weird me out. I mean, I went out the weekend before this trip and bought the only hooded windbreakers I could find, paid a ridiculous amount for them at that sports store that has replaced bookstores across the U.S., and not one drop of rain since we arrived in London. Very un-English. So I was pleased to dig out our dorky, matching windbreakers in fashion colors. We pulled up our hoods and marched into town.

I wanted to look at the Cathedral right away, but since we'd gotten such a late start (we'd gotten a late start every morning since that first one with Westminster Abbey) we already wanted our lunch. We found some odd European bistro-looking place with skinny tables and plastic highchairs for everyone. I didn't know whether to expect a martini or a bib. (The best places offer both, of course.)

Here we followed our usual M.O. with restaurant food, where I order some expensive dish I'd never get in the States (fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash, etc.) and Ron and Benny would split a hamburger or some plain chicken breast. I expected this routine to continue into France, with Ron and Benny eating breadsticks while I tucked into coq au vin. After two weeks, I'd most likely roll into America 10 pounds heavier while my family trailed after me, too weak to carry their bags.

I'm a big one for chronological sightseeing; I like seeing the Romanesque church before the Gothic cathedral and the Norman castles before the Baroque chateaux — you get the drift. So I herded us into Canterbury's Roman Museum, where we stood behind a lovely Indian family who spent half-an-hour mulling whether to get a city museum pass before declining. This gave Ron plenty of time to pick out historically themed school supplies, including a Caesar pencil sharpener and a Roman Ruler (ha ha).

Benny the Roman Gladiator

The museum cost 6 pounds a head, but believe me, it was worth every pence. We practically had the whole place to ourselves, and it was quite informative and tastefully high-tech. Britain has obviously invested some money in their museum exhibits, because the new techie touch-screen presentations have been first rate. The Crown Jewels at the Tower, Roman Canterbury and later Dover Castle were all presented in that interactive, 4th-grade-reading-level strategy that was too easy for the 9-year-olds but perfect for their tired, middle-aged parents.

We had to tear ourselves out of there though, because Canterbury Cathedral beckoned. I was fully prepared to pay serious money to see the place and was all psyched up not to say "You're shitting me!" when presented with the 25-pound admission price, but it turned out the Cathedral was free because it was Sunday. Or we just snuck in accidentally. Either way, we saved some money and it partially made up for the 6 Pound chicken Benny wouldn't touch at lunch.

The cathedral nave.

We'd barely had 10 minutes there — hardly enough to gawk at the rose windows — when people started gathering for Evensong in the quire, with the King's School Boy's Choir. This was not to be missed, so we lined up and found ourselves sitting on the ancient, red-cushioned benches. I let Benny read his book until the procession began, with a dozen boys Benny's age pacing by in robes with Elizabethan ruffs. Ron and I were hardly able to follow the service; instead we sat agog, mouths open, at the pure voices soaring up to stained glass windows. By the time we left though, Benny had had enough, so Ron took him outside while I toured the rest of the Cathedral.

The "Adam Delving" stained glass window. What's he digging, a well?

There are few things I like better than wandering around some historic place alone with some dorky guidebook, and Canterbury Cathedral was no exception. But I kept getting lost, ending up at the Adam Delving stained glass window when I wanted to see the spot where was Thomas Becket was murdered, or stepping into St. Anselm's Chapel when I hadn't seen the Black Prince's tomb yet. This makes chronologically obsessed tourists like me crazy.

The modern Altar of the Sword's Point where Becket was murdered, so named because a knight's sword point broke with the ferocity of the blows.

The figure made of iron nails hanging above the original spot of Becket's tomb, cryptically named "Transport."

I lingered as long as I could, admiring the chapels and crypts. Another thing Europeans do well is integrate modern art into the most ancient of sites. The dramatic modern cross above Becket's murder site and the human figure made of nails hanging above the original location of Becket's tomb are two great examples of this. (I noticed some distinctive modern art in the Louvre gardens as well.)

We tried to have dinner at the King's Head again, so Benny could pet the cat, but Sunday hours are pretty strange in Britain. We arrived and settled ourselves at 6 p.m., when dinner service usually begins, but a quick look at the menu revealed that on Sunday, the pub doesn't start dinner until 7. So we ended up at a fish and chips place across the street that apparently didn't care about the Sabbath, and once again went to bed ridiculously early, since we were catching a morning train to Dover the next day.

London to Canterbury

Canterbury Cathedral peeking over the trees.

We loved London, but I was rather keen to push on to Canterbury. We repacked our backpacks and strapped them on, staggering around our room to adjust to the weight. Our plan was to check out of the B&B, stash our bags in the residents' lounge and walk over to the British Museum. Then we'd have lunch and take an afternoon train to Canterbury.

We were still a little worn out, though. Ron was especially surly because he hadn't been able to take the morning bike ride in London he'd mapped out. A group of students had taken over the lounge next door to our room and carried on until Ron told them to get lost. Then he was too cranky to go back to sleep and had to skip the bike ride.

I missed the whole thing (love those earplugs!), but I mentioned the issue to the B&B owner and he credited us a whole night's stay! Ron was mollified when I told him and we went to Museum in a better mood.

I just want to give a big shout out here to San Francisco Public Schools. They're trying to do a lot with reduced funding and increased funding, but Benny's class still went through an extensive unit on Greek myths. Add in some amazing graphic novels of the "Odyssey" and "Illiad," and Benny has a good working knowledge of classical mythology. Just in time, too, because the British Museum is all about ancient culture. Benny pointed out griffins, centaurs, satyrs and monsters (Cyclop, Hydra, Minotaur) with no trouble. He could identify various gods and goddess by their props. (Poseidon had is trident; Artemis had her crescent moon.) Entire rooms were covered with friezes displaying battles that Benny could follow like a graphic novel.

Benny at the British Museum, admiring ancient carvings of the Assyrian war against Babylon.

We walked out of the museum a few hours later, blinking in the sunshine, and ate foot-long hotdogs wrapped in long baguettes on the steps. Then we picked up our bags and chatted with the B&B owner's wife. (She looked and sounded just like Mrs. Doubtfire; Ron and I could not even look at each other during the conversation.) Then we took a bus to Pancras Station.

On the train to Canterbury.

Pancras was modern and cheery, looking more like a small airport than a railway station. I rather regretted not going to Victoria, though, buying tickets to the Continent while humanity swirled around me a la Sherlock Holmes. Ron and Benny waited on Platform 12 while I popped into a nearby store and bought enough provisions for a trans-continent ride to Calcutta. The train journey to Canterbury was a bit of letdown — I've had morning commutes to work that lasted longer. In London we looked out at concrete barriers; out on the countryside we saw hedges. There were teasing little gaps in the shrubbery, however, revealing fetching little glimpses of the landscape. "Look, look!" I'd cry repeatedly to Benny, who would glance up from his little plastic knights just as the hedges closed ranks once more. After the third time, he refused to respond.

We arrived at Canterbury West Station and were just congratulating ourselves on a job well done when I realized our B&B was a short walk from Canterbury EAST. We were too cheap to take a taxi and there was no bus in sight, so Ron and I consulted a map and said, "Well, it doesn't look too far." The journey turned out to be more than a mile, tramping along busy roads, bent under backpacks until we reached Wincheap Road and staggered past the long row of tall, skinny houses. We arrived red-faced and footsore, hardly able to listen to owner Debbie explain our room's 50 rules ("Open the window this way ... don't open the bathroom door during your shower or you'll set off the fire alarm ...") We just nodded and tried not to pant.

We had dinner at a pub called the "King's Head," where I had a steak, ale and mushroom pie and Benny ate a burger while talking to the pub's cat. Then we returned to our cute, fussy, blessedly quiet room on the top floor and went to sleep. One night on this trip, I thought, we'll make it past an 8 p.m. bedtime.

London: The Tide Waits for No Family

In front of Tower Bridge.

Me: Are you excited to go the Tower, Benny?
Benny: I'm especially excited I'm not going there to be executed.

We were beginning to adjust to London time, which meant no more 4 a.m. risings. Instead, we slept in until 8, barely getting to the dining room in time to get breakfast, and not leaving the B&B until almost 10. Benny was lethargic until we boarded the boat for the trip to the Tower of London, one of the crown jewels of this European Trip for me.

Outside our London Bed and Breakfast.

Benny loved the boat ride. We admired the new glassy skyscrapers on the opposite bank, most topped with construction cranes, including "the Shard" and one building that looked like a crystal pineapple.

We disembarked beside the Traitor's Gate, the historic water entrance for Tower prisoners. Queen Elizabeth (then Princess) was sent to the Tower by her sister Queen Mary and arrived there by the Traitor's Gate.

Traitors Gate at morning low tide, seen from the Thames.

Traitor's Gate at afternoon high tide. Too late to enter now! 

Elizabeth's arrival was delayed by the famous "Tide Letter" (which I saw on a previous trip to London). She had asked the lords escorting her for time to write a final letter to her sister and by the time she finished, the water level of the Thames was too high for her to go to the water that day. When she finally did arrive at the Tower, she sat on the water steps and refused to move until one of her male servants started crying. Elizabeth scolded him, and her spirits restored, agreed to be conducted to her prison. I wanted to see those water steps. It was all I could do not to jump onto the pier and run for the Tower walls.

A few pretty girls were walking the Tower grounds in Elizabethan costume; it must be hard to smile and smile while tourists swarm around you. One guy stepped all over one girl's trailing skirts, pinning her to the spot, and he just laughed and didn't even apologize. Benny liked the crown jewels and the knights' armor. We were less impressed by the monument on the scaffold site: a glass pillow surrounded by the Tower's most famous victims: Anne Boleyn, Katharine Howard, the Earl of Essex, Lady Jane Grey. It was an odd memorial, kind of a Cinderella slipper story gone bad.

The Bell Tower, where Elizabeth was kept.

I tried to get Benny to go to the Torture Chamber but he would have none of it. I went, but it was pretty tame anyway — What happened to the stuffed guy stretched out on the rack? Why is the chopping block jumbled in with a bunch of other items instead of standing out in its grisly glory with a nice ax next to it?

William the Conqueror's White Tower.

Tragedy always makes you hungry, so we had fish and chips on the waterfront, then climbed back into the boat. We walked along the waterfront, admiring the Battle of Britain memorial, on the way to the Churchill War Rooms. In hindsight, we really should have skipped the Churchill War Rooms. Our asses were dragging, and I for one had slept poorly the night before. But I'd already paid a fortune for the tickets, so we headed inside. It was fascinating, but to our tired eyes, it was also a warren of hot, dark and crowded passageways. Ron and Benny vanished, and I wandered the rooms searching for them before finally thinking to go outside where I found them drooping in the sunshine like unwatered roses.

Wiped out after a long day.

Obviously jet lag was kicking our butts, so all we could do is go to bed early again and hope the next day would be better. We were leaving London for Canterbury the following afternoon and would need our wits about us.

I Spy with my London Eye

Our second day in London began at 4 a.m., just Benny and I sitting on his bed at the Bed & Breakfast trying not to wake Ron. I spent the time reading my Lonely Planet "England" guidebook and dithering over the day's plans. Since we were up at such an ungodly hour (only 8 p.m. in California, though), I decided to take us to Westminster Abbey and get in line before it opened and the tour buses arrived. 

Benny loved the English breakfast, with hot chocolate presented to him in a little pot. Ron and I attacked our plates piled with fried eggs and slabs of hamlike bacon, with a fried tomato on the side. I knew what the last was, because I'd read Bill Bryson's book on England. ("I thought it was a blood clot!") It was such a civilized way to start the day, especially for a woman who usually began her mornings with a Snapple and a Special K bar.

So anyway, there we were at Westminster Abbey, 45 minutes before it opened, so we walked along the Thames and admired Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Benny stared in amazement at the London Eye, the city's enormous ferris wheel, and only solemn promises that we would ride it that very day would convince him to leave the riverfront.







Westminster Abbey was a little overwhelming. I mean, here's this medieval building — small, dark, elaborately carved — built by King Henry III in 1245. Chapel after chapel, tomb after tomb, statue after statue, the three of us patiently shuffled along with the crowd, and this is at 9 a.m. on a Thursday before summer begins for most families. Most of the sightseers had audioguides clamped to their right ears, squinting at the carvings in the colored light reflected by stained-glass windows. I'm of two minds about audioguides. Obviously they're better than huddled groups following a tour guides, but these audio devices are kind of like cell phones -- they distance you from their surroundings. I personally only used them in surroundings I didn't know, like the Churchill War Rooms or Versailles. Most of the time, I followed my little printed guides.


Benny started asking to leave at Edward the Confessor's tomb, and by the time we got to the Tudors, he was ready to revolt and wondering if he liked England so much after all. But the Tudors were non-negotiable, of course, and he did let me lift him to look at Queen Elizabeth I's tomb, where she rested with her sister Mary, who almost executed her.





We bade a regretful farewell to Westminster Abbey (well, I did) and
hopped a double-decker bus to St. Paul's Cathedral. "Do we have to go in there?" Benny asked nervously, but I was more interested in the tourist office across the street. I bought Fast Track tickets for the Tower of London, The London Eye and the Churchill War Rooms and then we started looking for a lunch. We ate take-out burgers on the steps of St. Paul ("The li-i-ittle old bi-i-i-rd woman comes ...")

Speaking of birds, where the heck had all the pigeons gone? Ron and I had visited Britain in 1997, and we remember flocks of pigeons practically darkening the skies at Trafalgar Square, St. Paul's steps and other public squares. What had they done with the pigeons? I imagined some grim bird elimination campaign by the London Olympic Committee, some kind of Birdbrain Orange thing or pigeon contraceptions in the fountain water. Arsenic-laced bread crumbs, perhaps? One wonders.

View from the London Eye

I found another bus that took us to the London Eye, an elegant circle ringed with bubble-like cars that would take us more than 400 feet into the air. We stood in our bubble, noses pressed against the glass to take in the incredible views. Benny was enthralled, but once the excitement died down, he slumped against the bus stop, exhausted and convinced that nothing would ever please him again. Ron and I took him back to the B&B and we picnicked in our room and went to bed early again.

Europe: Packing Our Bags

Destination London

So we went to Europe this week. It wasn’t a whim, but the product of months of planning, almost overplanning, if one can actually overplan a trip to Europe. If so, I may have come close.

I had definite ideas about what kind of trip Ron, Benny and I would take, and it wasn’t about dinners, shopping or theater. We had a 9-year-old and a tight budget, and tickets for “War Horse” in London or a fricassee of snails and wild garlic at Le Meurice in Paris wasn’t in the plan.

Instead, this trip was about seeing the sights and enjoying European history and culture without spending a fortune. So the Europeans were treated to the sight of a dazzled, badly dressed American trio staggering along the cobblestones, bags on their backs and under their eyes. (We really underestimated the jet-lag from a 10-hour, San Francisco-to-London flight. It took days to recover.)

I was resigned to the dorks-on-parade quality of this trip, so to help me plan, I turned to the Head Dork of European Travel, Rick Steves. I was no fan of his TV shows: the constant shopping, the staged local encounters, his soothing put-down-the-knife voice.  “See?” he seemed to say cheerfully. “Europe isn’t scary. Europe is fun. I know you haven’t been off the couch in 15 years, but that’s okay.  So go, go to Copenhagen.”

How will we fit it all?

But I did remember liking his “Europe Through the Back Door” book 15 years ago, so I ordered it through Amazon, and after 10 pages was ready to do almost everything it said. Pack Light, Rick said, so I stuffed everything for a two-week trip into two backpacks (just under the carry-on limit) and four smaller bags. Clothes, toiletries, vitamins, journals, earplugs, travel alarm and a small roll of duct tape, and we were ready to go.

Our luggage for the trip - cat not included.

Rick said to use money belts, so I spent an hour rifling through our closets for the belts Ron and I used when we lived in Prague. We stuffed them with passports, credit cards and about $1000 in U.S. dollars between the two of us. We’re drawing the rest of our funds from ATMs overseas, per Rick’s instructions, which is working out beautifully. We’re only using our cards for big-ticket purchases, like hotel bills or ferry tickets. Benny’s been getting a daily allowance to buy himself treats and souvenirs.

So each of us boarded our British Airways with one big bag and one little bag and we didn’t check a thing. Our flight to London was uneventful, but I’d forgotten how long it took to escape Heathrow. The “Other Passports” line was miles long, packed with cranky people. Then we trudged through passageways and doorways and up and down escalators and through tunnels until we popped out into the main terminal and it was time to spring into action. I’d decided to take the Tube into London for 5 pounds apiece because the shuttle was 20 pounds and a taxi at least 65 pounds. But the Tube ride would take an hour and Benny was starving. So I bought chicken and apples at an airport market for him and Ron to eat while I figured out how to buy Tube tickets.

The Tube ride went well – I flipped through a magazine while Ron and Benny fell asleep in their seats — and we found our B&B near the British Museum with no trouble. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, of all things, on a busy, interesting corner swirling with black cabs and red double-decker buses. Returning to the B&B, we went to bed at 8 p.m., exhausted but thrilled to be here at last. Thanks, Rick.

Mom Glasses

So my Mom left town recently, hopping the train back East to the Land of Free Parking and Affordable Housing. The nice thing -- well, I should say one of the many nice things -- about having your Mom visit is that she looks at the whole life through Mom Glasses, which are closely related to Rose-Colored Glasses but without peppy, positive vibe that can get a little grating.

Anyway, so my Mom and her Glasses came to visit and suddenly every aspect of my life took on a pinky sheen. Living in San Francisco means living a little smaller, because every square foot of the damn city is worth upwards of $300,000. So you've got the wee apartment with the wee kitchen and the microscopic bathroom and the squeezy garage space with the post on the side. We drive a teeny Honda Fit, which I spent the whole weekend squeezing into ridiculously small parking spaces because I couldn't ask Mom to hike up hill and down dale just to get a pastry.

Of course, that meant a couple days of driving Mom around and watching my language as yet another bleepin' idiot stops dead in the middle of a small, twisted street and wants to back up to the parking space he saw half a mile back. Or the other bleepin' bicyclist who courts death by breezing through a stop sign and nearly gets plastered on my front bumper and then gives me a sneering look of Judgment. And I can't even swear, because Mom's in the car, not because she'd object to my language, but because she's obviously having a good time, snapping pictures of the corner drugstore or something and listening to her eldest child shrieking streams of expletives at bleepin' drivers who just stand outside their car door, in the street, blocking every body as they talk on their phone isn't exactly a fun vacation experience.

So I did a lot of mumbling as I drove and tried to keep the Scowl of Death off my face and everything was pretty OK, because again, we've got the Mom Glasses on here, and a funny thing happened ... I started to look at San Francisco through Mom's eyes too and appreciated again why we live in this city. (Not Muni though. Not even Mom Glasses can make Muni look good. The only thing that would make Muni look good is psychedelic drugs, which is a strategy some San Franciscans understandably adopt.)

So thank you Mom, for visiting and bringing your Glasses along to remind me why we live in San Francisco.

Picky Picky Picky Contest Guidelines

So this morning I mailed off my entry to a literary writing contest and I’m still reeling.

Contests like those sponsored by the Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks, or PNWA, are a valuable way for unpublished writers to get noticed, but I must say that the submission guidelines give a whole new meaning to the phrase “barriers to entry.”

First of all, I’m convinced that the guidelines are a product of years, if not decades, of pet peeves developed by literary writing contest judges, because let me tell you, they are not written with the writer in mind. And yes, I realize that these august personages are donating their time and expertise and any little thing we can do to smooth the path is in our own best interests.

And actually, I suspect that literary writing contests like convoluted rules and submission processes. First of all, they provide a wonderful excuse to reject obviously scrabbled-together, last-minute entries rife with spelling and grammar mistakes. (“Ah, I note this writer did NOT put his category number on the outside of the envelope! Out of the pool!”) Secondly, such guidelines weed out the mediocrities and through natural selection produce the most astute and sophisticated of contestants, those freaky brainiacs who never consider submitting a 5.24-inch by 8-inch SASE envelope when obviously only a 4.125-inch by 9.5-inch envelope is called for. Finally, such guidelines only increase the prestige of the writing contest, implying that due to the enormous volume of submissions, requiring tiny little boxes packed with information on each upper right-hand corner is the only way to preserve the honored judges’ sanity.

It is in this spirit that I offer my own Literary Writing Contest Guidelines. I myself am not sponsoring a literary writing contest (oh heavens no), but it’s fun to assemble those hoops. So I offer this template for any individuals or organizations eager to discover desperate, unpublished writers while garnering a little prestige for themselves, but unsure how to go about it.

____________________________________________________

CONGRATULATIONS for choosing to participate in the Picky Picky Picky Literary Writing Contest. We are thrilled to offer this opportunity for fabulous prizes to American authors. Unfortunately due to shipping schedules, we are unable to accept submissions from states that begin and end with the same letter, but we look forward to seeing our Ohioan friends’ work in next months Less Picky Picky Picky contest.

Participants may submit in one of 47 categories. Unproperly categorized submissions will be discarded. Once you choose your category number, put it on everything: your pages, your big envelope, your postcard, your SAS #10 envelope, your check, tattoo it on your forehead. Own your category.

Your submission must be 4 pages, no more, no less. Double-spaced. Writers submitting single-spaced copy will be shot. The Synopsis is page one. The outline is page two. The author’s bio is page three. The table of contents should take up at least half of page four. Of course that means only a half-page is left for your story, but for our expert judges, 125 words is more than enough.

All submissions must be received by Feb. 29, 2013. Submissions mailed after that date will only be accepted through the Space-Time Continuum and received on Feb. 29, 2013. We will not sign for submissions. REPEAT, we will not sign for submission. We are busy people and have no time to sign for submissions. Teach your envelopes to be self-reliant.

Questions? Comments? We do not welcome them. Sink or swim — that’s the literary world today.

Sincerely,

Picky Picky Picky Literary Writing Contest Luminaries

We're going to Europe this summer

Yup, you read that right, we're going to Europe this summer, from June 4 to 18. I can't believe we're actually taking this trip, but it must be true, because I just paid the credit card bill for the plane tickets. I spent January checking travel sites, dithering between flight destinations (London, Paris or Prague?) and flipping out over the prices. Flying from California to Europe is not cheap.


Finally I sat down at the dining room table with my laptop, determined to make this work. I even briefly considered flying into Dublin —  its lack of heavy airport fees makes it just about the cheapest place to fly into Europe — and then taking RyanAir to London. If this was a longer trip, that's what I'd do. But time is precious on a two-week trip, so I found us a San Francisco-to-London, Paris-to-San Francisco trip, nonstops to and from London each way. Travelocity said there were no nonstops, but they lie, so I hopped over to British Airways, and there were the nonstops, big as life.

I plugged all our information in, goggled at the total price, hyperventilated just a tiny bit, and clicked "Book." Then, devastation. Our credit card rejected the transaction. Whaaat? I tried our Virgin card. Nada. So I called up our credit union, sitting on hold, trying not to doubt that my call was very important to them, constantly refreshing my British Airways page so they wouldn't erase all my information. "Oh yes," the credit union lady said. "We always do that with large amounts in France." Apparently if American families make a sudden cross-continent purchase, the terrorists win or something.

So I got the credit union on board with our plans, looked at the total, hyperventilated again (we hadn't put this much on the card since our cat's intestinal surgery) and clicked "Book." The site asked me to read some sort of LSD-laced squiggle, which I failed twice, but then reluctantly allowed me to book the flight. Yay! We now have flight reservations, and I even coughed up an extra $100 to reserve three seats on the SFO-Heathrow flight, so Ron, Benny and I have our own private row.  Ron was at work that day, but he knew our plans immediately, because Virgin called him up, asking if he knew his wife was plotting a European jaunt. Ron, to his credit, resisted the urge to cry, "What? She's leaving me for that French masseur, isn't she!" and merely said yes.

With flight reservations in hand, it was time to consider the passport situation. Ron's was fine, but mine expired in April and Benny didn't have one. So one Saturday Benny and I played tourist, taking the train down to the Financial District and stopping by a passport/visa/shipping/notary public kind of place to get his picture taken. Then we walked over to Union Square and ate hot dogs for lunch, watching the tourist double-deckers rumble by. It was a beautiful sunny day and I'd promised Benny a ride on one of those big red buses when we first came to San Francisco. Well, a mere five years later, today was the day!

Not a lot of tourists in February.

The tour bus lady let Benny on free and me half-price because we were local and we snuggled under blankets and rolled through the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Fisherman's Wharf and the Financial District before getting off at the Ferry Building. We found a bookstore and I bought a stack of European travel books and Benny bought a comic book version of "The Iliad," which had Achilles, Agamemnon and their pals all looking like superheroes of the "Fantastic Four."

TransAmerica Pyramid

Benny had Feb. 11 off (Lunar New Year Observance), but the government was still open, so Ron and Benny met me at work downtown so we could apply for Benny's passport. Apparently a couple hundred San Francisco parents had the same idea, so the place was mobbed and we spent a long two hours in line at the one post office that didn't require an appointment.

So now we've booked our flights and Benny's applied for his passport, so it's time for the next obsession: reserving accommodations in London and Paris. But we'll save that excitement for another time. So for now au revoir!

Deadline Day

So I was losing my mind yesterday — don't worry, it happens often, it always comes back, it knows where I live because, well, it's my mind — while working from home.

I was on deadline, virtuously tapping away, when I heard a Boeing 747 land on my street. Well, it sounded like one anyway, and when I opened my living room blinds for the first time that morning (it was 11 a.m.), I saw a guy with a jet engine strapped to his back, harnessing its awesome power to blow six leaves off the sidewalk.

Frankly, I considered that a bit of overkill, like someone noticing a spider on the wall and immediately digging in the closet for their Uzi. I mean, the guy could have cleared those leaves just as quickly with a rake or even a fork. Hell, he could have gotten faster results with a set of chopsticks. If he missed the noise, he could make little leaf-blowing sounds as he used the chopsticks, sort of a "vroom vroom (click click) vroom vroom ..."

That would have been a lot better, but no, I was trapped here with the leaf-blower guy outside. I've been working from home for a few months now, and I'm terribly productive. I've advanced to the Alaskan nuclear weapons facility in Metal Gear Solid 4 and built a medieval village out of Legos. Oh yes, and I've written some articles and worked on my own writing project.

Now usually jet engine leaf-blowers don't threaten to make me lose my mind, but it was Deadline Day. When I accept writing assignments, the deadline days are in the distant, misty future and I"m all "Of course I can write all these articles. I can't wait to call Oakland brokers and Bay Area CEOs and some guy named Senate who runs a hacker space." I'm always very excited to accept an assignment and immediately start drawing up long source lists and mentally spending my freelance fee.

Then suddenly I turn a planner page and there's Deadline Day, one week away, prompting me to spend a day frantically working the phone and email screen. Of course, what happens when you call or email people — and I can't be the first to have noticed this — is that some will actually respond, and you find yourself fielding all these calls and emails and trying to remember what you wanted in the first place.

But even worse is facing Deadline Day with a headache and a bunch of stories with more holes than Swiss cheese. Then I wish I was writing fiction again, because it's not like I woke up one morning halfway through a novel thinking "I want to write my chapter today about the playboy governor of Pluto who makes porn films on the side but he won't call me back!"

Plus, looking over what I'd written so far, all I see are the holes and the lead with the subtle Dickens reference that sounded so cute a month ago reads kind of stupid now.

Speaking of literary references, I actually did put a John Donne quote in a story lead once. Actually, it wasn't a story lead, it was an editor's letter for the "Bay Area's Most Awesome Philanthropists with Money to Buy an Ad" publication. Since I was the editor, I had to write the damn letter and out of desperation I used Donne's "no man is an island" quote as a starting point. My boss liked it, anyway, which was good enough because nobody else reads an editor's letter.

So there I was on Friday, coping with Deadline Day, putting the finishing touches on my three articles. Well, "finishing touches" might be exaggerating a bit; "fact-checking every picky thing" might be more accurate in the case of two articles and "writing the damn thing from scratch" well describes the third.

Friday was also Deadline Day for my son Benny, who typed up a four-paragraph report on black holes last week with the help of a library book and the Hubble space website. I'm trying not to pass on my own angst and procrastination and bad habits concerning Deadline Day to Benny. He is more responsible than I, although neither of us can write a word without a dose of chocolate. I don't want him to dread Deadline Days, because every day has some sort of deadline and if you freak out over all of them, you'll never do anything. So I try to keep a brave front regarding my deadlines and glue back all the hair I'd pulled out that day in frustration and keep my revenge fantasies regarding leaf-blower operators to myself.

And I stay away from Benny's Halloween candy for most of the day because he'll know if I swipe a piece (yes, he counts them), then finally break down and eat a mini Milky Way Dark.

It wasn't my fault.

It was Deadline Day.

Bad Poetry

I work from home now and set my own schedule, which means the moment is ripe for lots of bad poetry. Here are two quickies from this morning.

THE DIPLOMAT

My son will not kill a bug.

I joyfully squish the nasty insect

swooping down with my shoe

triumphantly celebrating a world

with one less bug.

My son will not kill a bug.

His white tissue is a flag of parley.

He gently swaddles his new friend

and negotiates its release

out the kitchen window.

THE RETIREE

My neighbor just retired.

This has happened to me before.

My quiet days buried under

buzz saws and motors.

I doubt this neighbor

will rebuild a motorcycle engine

in a San Francisco apartment,

but I hear the desperate activity upstairs,

footfalls of a searching soul

and I tremble

as generations of wives and neighbors

have trembled at the prospect

of a recent retiree.

Third Grade!

Benny started third grade yesterday. Two of his best friends are in his class this year. He already had homework last night. I guess the long, lazy spelling list-free days are over.

The Waning Days of Summer

After returning from the Midwest, we finished up the summer with a few weird projects around the house.

Benny went to Chess Camp for a week (he even won a little trophy in the Friday tournament) and we made a Chess Cake to celebrate. Benny was very particular about placing the chess pieces.

Which side is winning?

We also held a day-long Monopoly tournament featuring eight stuffed animals. Bat won the trophy with some very cunning deals. Froggy made some very reckless business deals  but Camel was quite prudent.

Free Shakespeare in the Park was performing "Henry V." I wanted to take Benny to see it since he likes British history and battles and knights. So to prepare him for the play, we made the main characters out of paper towel rolls.


Here are the two conniving bishops who gave Henry the idea to invade France in the first place.

Here's King Henry V:

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends!" 

These are (left to right) the French ambassador, the Chorus and the French dauphin.

Dauphin: "My horse is better than anybody's."

Let's not forget Princess Katherine:

"Is it possible dat I should love de enemy of France?"

And here's the whole cast:

"May our oaths well kept and prosperous be!"

Ron, Benny and I packed a picnic and went to see the performance in Redwood City. It was very well done, with lots of music and valiant swordfights with duffel bags. Benny was able to follow the action and he knew the big quotes. He came home with one of the tennis balls that the French Dauphin sent Henry to make fun of him.

Go Packs Go!

So I'm finally uploading my pictures from our July vacation to the Midwest. There aren't many, I'm afraid, and most are plagued by bad lighting.  But here we go.

In Wisconsin we visited Ron's sister and her family and celebrated Independence Day. The week included a visit to Lambeau Field, the shrine of the Green Bay Packers. Go on, ask me anything about the Packers. Really. Clouds of Packers trivia still swirl around my mind. The team was founded in 1921. The community of Green Bay has only 100,000 residents. Aaron Rodgers is the quarterback and he likes to strike weird poses in photos. Synthetic fibers are sewn into the field sod. Go on, ask me more.

Here are some shots of Benny at the Lambeau Field gift shop and museum:

Benny tries the Lambeau Leap.

Benny and I took the ferry to Michigan and attended my cousin Matt's wedding. It was a true family reunion, with all 11 cousins gathered in one location for the first time in years. Here's a picture of the Kilpatrick branch. Notice Benny's flapping shirttail. (He really hit the dance floor that night.)

Just Enough Innovation

So I’ve finished David Halberstam's history of Ford and Nissan for the fourth time since 1990. It's called The Reckoning and much of what Halberstam wrote still rings so true today.

There's a whole section about how the stock market changed companies. It used to be that only rich people owned stocks and they thought long-term. They didn’t expect ever-exploding dividends and hot growth trajectories. Then everyone started buying stocks and the hot stocks weren’t the old blue-chip Fords and U.S. Steel and others, but hot new companies like Polaroid (ha ha). Suddenly ever-increasing divedends were required and managers started thinking short-term rather than long. The new customers were the stockholders, not the people who actually used the product. It warped all the decision making. Investing in the company could hurt the balance sheet, which could hurt the stock price, so managers said no. If the customers were still willing to buy the product, why improve the quality? It was the quality of the stock, not of the product, that mattered.

This new Wall Street also lured the best and brightest into making money in the stock market. These people no longer went into companies and pushed them to innovate, the way those Japanese hotshot engineers transformed how Nissan made their cars. The hotshot engineers were at a car company because that was the only place they could go – they couldn’t build planes or ships. And they transformed the company, took it away from the old-school designers who just made a big iron frame and piled the components on it. Easy engineering. The new guys designed the structure in pieces and balanced the components. Lighter, better, more graceful. This would not have happened if those engineers were making tons of money doing something else.

So what does that say for true innovation in business today? I suppose it’s true that, like everything else in business, innovation follows the money. The hot tech companies with venture capital have the money, so they get the innovation. The companies that truly need innovation only get it if there’s a lot of money to made innovating. A lot of that innovation isn’t in improving the product, but squeezing out maximum profit for minimum investment. A behemoth like Comcast has already proved you can treat customers like crap for decades and it won’t matter if you have a stranglehold. The same goes for airlines.

Even a great company like Netflix — so innovative and high-tech and new-paradigmy — showed it wasn’t immune from such behavior. It revealed that it was just as greedy and contemptuous of customers as any other business with its attempt to spin off the DVD side. It thought it had the leverage to get away with it. Any company that provides a truly vital service — not just printing digital pictures or giving pedicures, but something people really need like banking or cable or plane flights  — can totally screw the customers.

And we customers are increasingly feeling exploited – companies not only want our time and money and loyalty, they want all our personal information so they can make money off that too. They’re like little Faustian demons roaming the earth, trying to find out the price for every soul. What will it take for you to cough up your email address, your zip code, your credit card number. Every day people must make these small decisions – is the convenience worth giving my email address or my name or my hometown? Is the ability to lovingly tend a virtual farm worth the permission to strip-mine my Facebook info and my friends’ info? Every day we must redraw the lines and every day the lines get weaker because, well, we’re tired and busy and the companies are so relentless, they ever tire, they prod prod prod at every weakness. That’s innovation today. It’s not about building something or creating something of value. It’s about creating just enough value so you can con somebody into paying for it, either with money or with information.  Too much value and you’re cheating your shareholders (or future shareholders). To little value and even consumers can see the con. That’s innovation today.

Well, you could argue that this is what capitalism is all about, finding the true market value for what you produce. That was definitely true when business was a little more personal. Big eggs are worth more than little eggs. You paid more for high quality and less for low quality. But it’s all so muddled now. It’s hard to discern the quality, especially with service and high-tech industries, where most of the innovation goes on now. What is a good bank account? It would take all day to figure it out.

I’m not quite sure what I’m saying here, but I do feel that the concept of scientifically determining the minimum acceptable quality down to a single click, kilobyte or interest point that will still sell is crappy innovation. It is nothing new; the Detroit carmakers in the 1960s and 70s sold crappy cars, they didn’t care about safety or quality or gas mileage because they still sold. They figured out to the dime how many fancy options they could pile on an already heavy car and what premiums they could charge for it. That was their innovation, while the Japanese were practicing true innovation with the cars themselves.

Does that mean American companies aren't innovating? Of course not. We here about American innovation all the time. But there’s two kinds of innovation: True Innovation and Just Enough Innovation. True Innovation actually improves the product, which means more value for the customer, which means you can charge more, and it’s a win-win, the customer gets a better produce or service, the company gets more money.  But it’s a risky kind of innovation and it’s difficult and the value doesn’t increase fast enough unless your product innovation is really hot like a minivan or iPod. This can be done with a new service that has real value, like Netflix.

Just Enough Innovation is a lot easier. You can do this kind of innovation an couple of ways. In the first way, you take a product or service — it’s easier with a service because it’s all perception anyway. You take a product or service that already exists and you tweak the hell out of it to finagle more money out of the customer. Cable companies and banks and airlines are great at this. They cut service and pile on the fees. You can do it with a product – like Detroit did with cars — but it’s harder because there’s a minimum standard you have to meet, I mean, the car has to drive on the road. Anyway, you degrade the service or product just enough so you can keep making money.

The second type of Just Enough Innovation is to invent a new kind of service or product that has questionable real value — I mean, it’s hard to think people will really need it — but think of a way to con people into paying for it, either with money or info or both. Think Farmville or that website that keeps your passwords for you. You offer something new and hot and creative and smoke-and-mirror the hell out of it so customers think they’re getting a deal. Hey, I can play CastleVille for free!

This Just Enough Innovation is what many of the brightest minds in business are trying to do today. Either they’re trying to calibrate an existing service or product for maximum ROI and minimum value, or they’re trying to create something new to con customers into giving up something.

A valuable and meaningful mission for America, indeed.

Caves and Mountains

(As always, you can click on the pictures for a better view.)

The next morning greeted us with gloomy skies, so we decided to visit Oregon Caves rather than Crater Lake, reasoning that weather doesn't matter so much underground. So we drove to Cave Junction, then along a winding forest road to the Caves, where we forked over $24 for the three of us and entered the black gash in the mountain:

These caves are called the "Marble Halls of Oregon," formed by rainwater from an ancient forest. I kind of expected something like the marble Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley, which looked like this:

Instead I got this:

and this:

Seriously, it looked like snot was dripping off the walls. Now we all know I like rocks — there's no way you can read this blog without dealing with the rock talk — but the Oregon Caves left me cold, and it wasn't just the 40-degree temperature. I spent the whole time silently going "Ewwww …" while watching Benny clamber along steep, uncertain paths ringed by bottomless chasms. After a while I felt I was walking through Moria with Frodo, except Moria was much nicer, even if you throw in the lake monster and the Balrog.

Here's a creepy ceiling shot:

I couldn't wait to get out of there, but Benny and Ron seemed to like it all right. We topped off the day at a Black Bear Diner, where Benny ordered a big stack of chocolate-chip pancakes.

The next day dawned bright and sunny and we praised Ron for suggesting we wait another day. It was Crater Lake day! Since the first time I saw Crater Lake 12 years ago, I have considered it one of Nature's most perfect places. The crater is gracefully round, the water is stunningly blue, the perky little island in the middle is a shiny green. Ron and Benny had never seen it so they had no idea what I was going on about. I wouldn't let them look at pictures or enter the visitor's center. No, we must first go straight to the lake — no detours.

Benny was a little jaded by this time after 11 days of natural wonders, and wasn't enthusiastic about climbing another mountain. Ron just patiently wound the Honda Fit through curve after curve, lined with Oregon's ubiquitous pine trees. The Fit chugged up the mountain like a champ -- after all, the little car had already traveled the Sierras, Cascades and Klamaths mountain ranges. It had tackled San Francisco hills and forded streams. It would take more than a 8,000-foot mountain to scare our little compact car.

But Benny's attitude changed completely when we we crossed the snow line. At first it was a little streak of white lining the road, then bigger clumps between the trees, until finally we entered a winter wonderland. I insisted we drive directly to the visitor center on the Rim, where the ground and trees were blanketed in snow. Crater Lake gets more than 30 feet of snow every winter, and the snowplows were still working to clear the Rim Drive.

It was nearly noon. I ran ahead of them and scrambled up a snowbank. "Come on!" I yelled, as if the mountain was going out for lunch or something. Ron and Benny followed, pelting each other with snowballs.

And there it was:

and here:

We posed for photos, squinting into the glaring sun:

Benny made a snowman:

Crater Lake was created when Mt. Mazama blew its top 7,700 years ago. Its summit collapsed after all the magma was released, forming a huge caldera. It took about 250 years of rain and snow to form the pristine lake. Cinder cones like Wizard Island formed on the bottom of the crater. The water is so intensely blue because the lake is so deep (589 feet deep, the deepest lake in the U.S.) and the water is so clear.

Crater Lake was the last official sightseeing spot of the trip, although we did admire Mt. Shasta in the distance as we drove south to San Francisco. We left the tumbled landscape of the Oregon-California border and entered the Sacramento Valley, with Lassen Peak on our left and the Coast Ranges on the right. We chose to drive around the northern rim of San Pablo Bay, turning south through Marin County and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. (Dealing with Bay Bridge traffic is no way to end a vacation.) We loved the trip, but after 12 days on the road, we were so glad to be home again.