Thursday, December 5, 2019
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Monday, December 2, 2019
Sunday, December 1, 2019
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
This Christmas I wanted an extra-special ornament to top the tree.
Inspired by a (long gone) silver foil star my family had when I was a kid, I searched out vintage topper stars and came upon this 1979 limited edition Gorham Sterling Silver Tree-topper.
Hence, a new Christmas tradition (and family heirloom) is born.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
MARK TWAIN'S BIRTHDAY
My
father wanted me to get to know Mark Twain when I was about ten years old and even
tried to bribe me into reading The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I’d ignored that particular school
assignment), proposing a simple and straightforward deal: If I read Huck Finn he shells out five bucks for the
LA Dodgers windbreaker I coveted more than anything else in the whole world.
I
wouldn’t do it, couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I never did get the royal
blue jacket with white felt embroidery, a garment that to this day gives me shivers
of excitement when I see it worn.
Which
means I never got acquainted with Mark Twain growing up (the bribe may have
turned me off, plus I was more interested in comic books, my dad’s business as
an illustrator), but I did it my way (as I always do).

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Jackass Hill |
I didn’t know the Sierras would be about Mark Twain until I got there and found Jackass Hill, the small wooden cabin Samuel Clemens shared with a couple of buddies for three rainy weeks in January 1865, panning for gold near a town called Angels Camp.
Young Clemens exiled himself—slinking,
he called it—to the boonies as a result of feeling embarrassed and humiliated after
getting fired from his job as a reporter at the Daily Morning Call in San Francisco for writing a piece of journalism—
“Inexplicable News from San Jose”—way ahead of its time.
Almost
a hundred years later, the New Journalism innovated by Clemens would be
resurrected as original by Tom Wolfe,
utilizing the same devices unique to literary journalism, including a gonzo style
credited to Hunter S. Thompson if first conceived by Sam.
A
shop called Calaveras Coin and Pawn in Angels Camp now occupies the site (then the
Angels Hotel saloon) where Clemens overheard a prospector tell a drawn-out yarn
(heard earlier by Clemens in a premonitory dream) about a contest involving
frogs.
Inspired, Sam returned to San
Francisco and wrote it up as The Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County and, when it was published many months later in The New York Saturday Press under his
new nom-de-plume, Mark Twain, he became
a nationwide sensation, launching him to fame as a humorist and orator.
I’m
standing at this very spot where destiny had manifested itself for a slinking Sam Clemens when a one-ounce
gold coin from the U.S. Mint commemorating Mark Twain snags my eye, and I’m
struck by an epiphany:
This guy is the Clubhouse on Wheels’ spiritual mentor!
This guy is the Clubhouse on Wheels’ spiritual mentor!
Why
else would my maiden road trip in the COW put me so near and dear to the ultimate
travel writer of his time, so widely quoted in memes:
In
gold I trust, so I bought the coin and carried it with me on road journeys
thereafter for luck and, if necessary, as a get-out-of-trouble card.
After discovering Mark Twain in Gold Rush Country, I wanted to
visit Hannibal, Missouri, where Sam Clemens spent most of his boyhood before
going west to rough it.
On a trip to Kansas City a few years later, I had that opportunity.
In the meantime, I’d flown to London for my nephew’s wedding and stayed at The
Langham, which, when built in 1865, set the standard for grand hotels in Europe—and
became Mark Twain’s favorite.
I’d hoped maybe
I’d run into Sam’s ghost, a phenomenon (ghosts in general) long associated with
The Langham.
I
booked the Mark Twain Suite but when I got there a plaque on the door said Chester Suite.
“I’m supposed to be in the Mark Twain Suite,” I called down.
“I’m supposed to be in the Mark Twain Suite,” I called down.
An
operator put me on hold, returned a minute later. “We did away with Mark Twain. It’s now called Chester.”
“How
can you re-name Mark Twain?”
But she was already gone.
And no ghost either.
Not even at Sam's old London home, 23 Tedworth Square.
Back to Missouri:
Fortified
by Kansas City ribeye steaks and a good night’s sleep, we hit the road,
arriving at Mark Twain’s birthplace in Hannibal...
A stroll through the Mark Twain Museum is followed by an hour’s cruise aboard a
paddle steamer down the Mississippi River, alongside Tom Sawyer’s Island.
When I was a kid my dad was able to get free passes to Disneyland so we would visit The Magic Kingdom two or three times a year, usually to celebrate birthdays, including my own.
By mid-afternoon, with
all the best attractions behind us, we would take it easy, which meant doing
Mark Twain’s Steamboat to Disney’s version of Tom Sawyer’s Island where my
father and brothers and I split into pairs and played ditch.
A connection, a memory, and an irony: though I couldn’t be bribed by my dad to read
Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn as a kid, here I am celebrating its author as spiritual
mentor, on a quest directed by my dad in a dream, cruising past the real Tom Sawyer’s
island.
A couple years after Hannibal (as documented in this blog), I did a road trip that took me through Hartford, Connecticut.
I wrote at the time (as part of a manuscript-in-progress of an ongoing mystical journey):
Here I
am at the gothic castle Sam built in Hartford when that city teemed with
writers and publishers, not insurance companies, gawking up at the house where Clemens spent his
happiest days but ultimately caused heartbreak when his favorite daughter Susy
died here, from spinal meningitis, at the tender age of twenty-four.

I set myself upon a bench on the porch where Sam once sat and where ethereal traces of he and his family remain.
On this gloomy dank
day the grounds are forlorn in an otherwise soulless city of actuaries and
underwriters.
Friday, November 29, 2019
Thursday, November 28, 2019
A THANKSGIVING FABLE
Ralph the
Turkey gobbled with his friends in the farmyard where they all lived. They gobbled about who had the prettiest
feathers. They gobbled about the quality
of birdseed. But mostly they gobbled
about how lucky they were not to be chickens.
Chickens, all turkeys knew, were cowards. Sure, chickens crossed the street, but nobody
ever knew why—and chickens probably didn't know why either. Dumb chickens! But the main reason these turkeys believed
they were lucky not to be chickens was because chickens were bred by humans to
be eaten as food. Or they were forced to
lay eggs that would be soft-boiled, hard-boiled, poached, fried or scrambled.
A large rooster named Rufus overheard
the turkeys gobbling as he sauntered by, pecking corn kernels. "Ha!" the rooster clucked. "You'll all get yours. Thanksgiving is coming soon."
"Thanksgiving?" gobbled Ralph
the Turkey.
"Uh-huh," Rufus clucked, in a
language only fowl could understand. "I can tell by the leaves, cluck-cluck. They've turned orange and yellow,
cluck-cluck, and they're falling from the trees."
"But what is Thanksgiving?"
asked Ralph the Turkey.
"When all the leaves have fallen,
and the trees are bare," clucked Rufus, "Thanksgiving will be
here. And when that happens—ha!—fried fried
chicken is not on the menu."
"N-n-no?" gobbled Ralph. "Then what? Pork chops?"
Rufus clucked with laughter. "Try again, gobble-face."
Something about this rooster's
cockiness worried Ralph. "You
m-m-mean...?" he gulped.
"Ma-ma-ma… you got it,
butterball," clucked Rufus.
"Stuffed and oven-roasted turkey!" And with that, the rooster eructed a
triumphant "cock-a-doodle-doo," then moseyed off clucking with
delight.
"Did you hear that?" gobbled
Ralph, addressing the other galliforms. "What are we gonna do, g-g-guys?"
The turkeys glanced around nervously,
shaking their snoods. It was obvious
that the trees would be barren of leaves in just a matter of days.
"Let's go see Ted Turkey,"
said one of Ralph's friends. "He'll
know what to do."
Ted was the toughest turkey on the
farm. And this old bird was reputed to
be the smartest, too.
The young turks surrounded Ted, and
Ralph conveyed what Rufus Rooster told them about Thanksgiving.
"R-R-Rufus is trying to scare us,
isn't he?" Ralph's eyes begged.
For a long moment, Ted was silent. "No," he gobbled. "It's true what that rude rooster
said. You will all be eaten at
Thanksgiving," he said bluntly. "Sorry," he added.
The turkeys were gobble-less. It was Ralph who finally found his
gobbler. "B-b-b-b-b-but... but you're still here, Ted."
Ted flapped his wings. "Darn right, I am. I'm too tough to eat."
"Can't we t-t-toughen up like
you?" asked Ralph.
"Too late," gobbled Ted. "Thanksgiving is almost here and you birds
are tender as can be. The only question
is, how those humans will prepare you."
Ralph puzzled this. "P-P-Prepare us? What are the ch-ch-choices?"
"Ch-ch-choices?" Ted squawked with laughter. "You don't get no ch-ch-choices. The humans decide on preparation."
"Preparation into what?"
Ralph implored.
"Chances are, oven roast turkey,
stuffed with chestnuts," said Ted. "A side of cranberry sauce. Or maybe smoked turkey breast and mashed potatoes covered in a gravy of
giblets."
"G-g-giblets?" asked Ralph.
"Internal turkey organs,"
gobbled Ted. "Liver and kidneys,
mostly."
Ralph gasped.
A few of the youngest turkeys started
to cry.
"Or could you wind up as turkey
salad sandwiches." Ted cocked his
head. "And I even hear they're
making turkey pastrami these days. And
turkey dogs. And turkey burgers. And turkey bacon. There's been a swing away from cattle."
"What about t-t-turkey soup?"
asked Ralph.
Ted Turkey considered this. "Yep.
I s'pose that's a possibility."
"If I'm going to end up on
d-d-dinner," gobbled Ralph. "I
want to be t-t-turkey soup."
Ted gobbled with mirth. "I told you turkeys already, you can't
decide nothing. Whether you get roasted,
fried, boiled, broiled, barbequed, smoked, micro-waved or souped, you have no
say, no way." And with that, Ted
flapped off, gobbling gaily about Christmas.
"What's Ca-Ca-Christmas?" asked
Ralph.
Ted called back, "You won't need
to know."
A few days before Thanksgiving, the
trucks arrived.
Word had already gobbled round the
farmyard about the meaning of trucks. What trucks meant was this: It
was time to flap your wings and scram. Because trucks were there to take all the tender, terrified turkeys to
the abbatoir—a fancy French word for
slaughterhouse.
Alas, a high fence surrounded the
turkeys, so scramming was not an option.
Rufus Rooster watched in glee as all
the turkeys—all except tough Ted
Turkey—were rounded up and shepherded aboard the trucks, which drove off in a
convoy.
Ralph was squashed in tight with all
the other turkeys and no space to even turn around. All he could think of was this: If he was going to become a meal, he wanted
to be turkey soup, even though all the other turkeys laughed when he talked
about that.
But the turkeys were all crying, not
laughing, when they drew near the abbatoir. The smell of poultry death hung thick and
fowl in the air. Ralph tried to hold his
breath to stifle his fear.
The truck in which Ralph was riding
ground to a halt. Its back doors swung
open and, one by one, each turkey was grabbed and hung by its feet from a metal
shackle. These were attached to a moving
rail that carried upside-down turkeys to the stunning tank. Here, the turkeys were dunked headfirst into
electrified water that knocked most of them out cold. The lucky turkeys did not wake up in time for
the next step: a throat slashing by a
mechanical blade. This allowed the
turkeys to bleed to death, “humanely,” before reaching a tank of boiling water.
Fortunately for Ralph, his soul had
already departed to turkey heaven by the time he reached the boiling tank. And good thing, too, since processing came next. And no self-respecting turkey would want to
stick around for processing.
Some turkeys were blast-frozen
whole. These butterballs would end up
stuffed and roasted.
Other
turkeys were carved up with a large knife and packaged into parts, including
giblets.
Ralph was tossed into a giant cauldron
with carrots and celery and spices, left to simmer, then canned and dispatched
to a supermarket.
Ralph's wish had come true. He was turkey soup.
Moral:
Relax. Sometimes things turn out
just fine.
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