Forty-six Seconds You'll Never Get Back

A Mid-November Gathering of the Clan

Today was one of those extra-special ordinary days, one on which a number of us gathered at Adrianne and Grace's house for a Sunday get-together. The weather was a little odd, as befits some of us, but in a good way (doubling the befitting): unseasonably warm. Temperatures in the high 70's with a low sun angle at midday made for an almost dreamlike environment.

The youngest generation had a ball.

Grace as wood nymph.

Adam and Kiana.

Adrianne's mom, Kathy, and her wonder dog Jack.

Caleb mimicks Jack's ears.

This is pretty much the expression Adam always has when watching his nieces and nephews.

Adam was the main cook for today's gathering, having prepared his extra-special lasagne (and a pot of veggie tortellini) to heat up in Adrianne's kitchen.

A-feasting. Adam and Doug's sister Reva (at left) gave a wonderful toast that included the ones who can't be with us again except in memory. Not everyone is in this photo; a few of the guys were inside, marveling at a miracle unfolding on TV: the 49ers scoring 35 points against an actual NFL team.

"Normal" means something different than it used to for this family, but it's starting to feel okay to me now.

Two Years On

Doug Harrington
October 1, 1966 - November 14, 2006

Alnitak's Having Fun in Containers Day

(With apologies to Mojo el Jefe for appropriating his posts' title format.)

This is a big part of the reason we put up with them. Within just a few minutes this afternoon:

UPS delivers new nesting materials to Al. It looks like his nephew, Cooper, is about to push him off the bed once he gets all nice and comfy, though.

HALP! QUICKPAPER!!

Al's mobility is temporarily hampered.

Yankees 3, Red Sox 1...

... and Most of the Players Are Still Alive.

That most of them are still above ground surprises me a little bit, since the game was played 50 years ago, on September 19, 1958.

(The illustrations in this post are smaller than usual because they are links to much larger and more detailed images in Flickr. Please click on them to see them as I intend them to be viewed. Thanks.)

Yankee Stadium, After the Game of September 19th, 1958

It was the only major-league game Dad and I ever attended together, and the first one I ever saw in person, so it holds a special place in my memory. I doubt that any of the living players remember it at all, though. It was very late in the season, both teams were insurmountably behind the White Sox for the American League title (in those days there were no "playoffs" -- you either won your league or you didn't), and they were just playing out the schedule because, well, that's what you do. But you do it fast; the game took less than two hours (today, a typical major-league game takes about three hours to complete.)

The inconsequential nature of that particular game is probably why Dad and I were able to attend. Dad hated the Yankees, so he sure as heck wasn't going to pay for his own tickets and travel all the way to New York City (which he also detested) to see them. We had a perfectly good minor-league team to go watch, too: the Binghamton Triplets*, just 40 miles down the Chenango Valley from our home outside Norwich, so why go to all that extra effort and expense, anyway? The company he worked for had a couple of season tickets to Yankees' games. The Yankees of that era were almost always in first place (a big reason why Dad didn't like them), so the corporate tickets were usually spoken for all year -- but not in '59, so Dad grabbed the languishing ones for Saturday, September 19th.

Watching Batting Practice from our Loge Perch

What I remember most clearly about the day was, oddly, our welcome at our seats. The seats were on the loge level (a narrow deck between the lower- and second-decks in old Yankee Stadium), with office-style chairs (not fixed to the floor) and a writing surface for keeping score or for resting hot dogs and drinks -- they were like desk seats. A very suave, tall, black usher greeted us at our seats, and whisked a dustcloth over the chairs. He said, "Welcome to Yankee Stadium" in a somber tone... with his palm outstretched in Dad's direction. I didn't notice that latter part, and was awed by the ceremony. I was twelve years old.

Dad was so caught up in the game in front of him that he didn't take any pictures during the action itself. This picture...

Dragging the Infield Between Innings

... is as close to an action shot as I can find in his slides. Too bad -- four players saw action in that game who eventually would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle started at catcher and center field for the Yanks, Whitey Ford (whose fluid, powerful, left-handed form I still remember with snapping clarity) was their starting pitcher, and Ted Williams, at the end of his penultimate season, pinch-hit for the Sox late in the game. I don't remember that Teddy Ballgame grounded into a double play; I do remember his stroll from the dugout to the plate and the goosebumps on the back of my young neck as he approached the batter's box.

Dad took one more picture after the game was over:

Postgame fans' stroll.

After the game, fans were allowed to stroll on the field (except for the infield area, which you can see being politely guarded by red-jacketed ushers.) After posting this quartet on Flickr, and including them in a couple of NYC groups, I was astonished at the level of viewing they garnered. This shot, in particular, provoked responses from folks much younger than me. For example:

"Chocolatepoint" says:
Baseball looks so much more interesting way back when. I suspect that just being able to walk on the field gave fans a connectedness to the game, the stadium and their team.
Nowadays, we have to rebuild stadiums so that rich people can have more skyboxes, security will barely let people move around and we have far too many whiny overpaid yet underperforming athletes.

... and ...
"sds70" says:
No way teams would let their fans do this anymore :( :( . . Too many security concerns, issues with messing up the grass, etc. . . . That would've been cool to do once

... and ...
"Jersey2Bronx" said:
Its sad that this era is gone.
I did a Yankee Stadium tour 2 weeks ago, and while we got to walk the warning track, we were not allowed to step foot on (or even touch) the grass on the field. The stadium is closed - there will never be another baseball game there, and yet STILL - a "regular guy" like me was not allowed to touch the grass. That in and of it self is contrary to what baseball used to be about. Its gone from being one of the most accessible and inclusive sports to being one that caters to the exclusive who can afford it - "access" for a price.
Sad...

As "chocolatepoint" noted, the connection between the players and their fans has been broken. I don't know when it happened, precisely, but I know it was after 1964. I know that because, in April of that year, Dad and I went to see a spring training game while we were on vacation in Florida. The game was in Daytona Beach, and the teams -- "barnstorming" out of their Florida headquarters elsewhere -- were the Kansas City Athletics and the Houston Colt .45s (later the Astros.) We sat close to the plate, and chatted with the players exactly as we did with the people sitting next to us in the stands: comfortably, without any sense of separation, physically, economically, or otherwise. Two players, both near the end of stellar careers, who I remember talking to were:

Nellie Fox (closing it out with the .45s) and...

Rocky Colavito (ditto with the A's.)

Adam, my son, it was a different time, one in which the players were more like their fans. But it was the same for fathers and sons then, a game you either got or you didn't, and if you did, it was a bond that surpassed time. Really, really strange, when you think about it.

Doug, Adam, and Me at a Baseball Game, San Francisco, Summer 2001.

*I loved going to Triplets games, by the way, and followed several of their players through their careers after Binghamton. One of them was Alphonso Downing, a pitcher who later gave up Henry Aaron's Ruth-surpassing 715th home run; another was Deron Johnson, a big lug who could hit a baseball farther than you could launch it with a bazooka -- but just not very often.

Offaly in Song!

The town of Birr, Diane's and my past and future temporary home in Ireland, is in County Offaly. County Offaly, I'm sure, is the least known of the Republic's 26 to Americans, so you can imagine our delight when our friend Lucile alerted us to this traditional ballad in which Offaly is mentioned in the first verse:



Oh, and the other stuff in it is pretty cool, too, truth be said.

DO NOT WANT, West Coast Edition

A while ago, Ruth posted an entry in her blog about the unwelcome approach of a hurricane, apparently headed straight for her home in coastal South Carolina.

Coastal California isn't immune to seasonal hazards, either, and the Fall hazard is fire, especially this year. We have had two straight years of much lower than usual rainfall, and so even the normally fire-resistant redwood forests (such as the one we live in here in the Santa Cruz Mountains) are virtually explosive, especially the undergrowth of hardwoods, Douglas Fir, and brush. So I was not at all pleased a few days ago when I arrived home (after having taken a couple of our animals to the vet) to see this in the cul-de-sac adjacent to a back boundary of Ft. Harrington:

Boulder Creek's Finest in Action

For the past week, the late nights and early mornings hereabouts have been chilly, including the first frosts of the season, even though the days continue to be hot (and very dry). Our nearest neighbor to the north (just across the fence from the gazebo area of Ft. Harrington) lit a trash fire in her wood-burning stove that morning to get warm, since her electricity had been turned off for non-payment sometime in the summer, and she didn't have any firewood. She left while the fire was still burning, and sparks from the paper in the trash fire survived their rise through the chimney and set her roof on fire.

The fire was noticed right away by an alert neighbor on the other side of the creek, who did a 9-1-1 shout-out to the Boulder Creek firehouse, and then drove to the nearest bridge across the creek and back to the cul-de-sac. Not raising anyone with her shouts, she found a hose outside a neighboring house and started trying to spray the roof fire with its pathetic little stream.

The BCFD was all over the case like flies on, ah... well, stuff, though, and arrived right then. The fire was out very quickly after they arrived, according to Diane, who had been unaware of the fire until seconds before the fire trucks arrived when she saw big, gray ash flakes falling on our deck -- and flames leaping from the far end of our neighbor's roof.

Putting away equipment. The derelict truck with the broken-windowed camper shell belongs to our firestarter's ex-husband, and hasn't moved for at least two years. ===>

Emergency flasher reflected in our garden house
<=== window.

The roof in the background of the last photo is the one that caught fire. Due to the telephoto's distance-squashing effect, it appears much closer to our fence than it really is. I don't have a photo of the area of damage, but it was small. It's been covered by a tarp, and our neighbor continues to live in the house.

We're all keeping an eye on her.

Whatever Shines

Mary Rosse's darkroom, Birr Castle, late 1800's.

John McCain and Barack Obama squared off again last night in the last debate before our Presidential election, and many "sound bites" were spat out by both sides, and will be hashed over and analyzed ad nauseaum elsewhere.

One that didn't get (and won't get) much attention -- because it's so predictable and so pablum -- was McCain's touting of his running mate as what he might call a "feminist": someone who has accomplished hard stuff about 50 years after someone of the other gender could have accomplished it. Good for her. Really.

But wouldn't a real feminist superheroine be one who breaks a barrier before some dude cracks it? Like maybe the Irish gals whose audacity is recounted in Whatever Shines Should Be Observed, a slender tract by Susan M. P. McKenna-Lawlor.

Whatever Shines Should Be Observed, part of Kluwer Academic Publishers' Astrophysics and Space Science Library, tells the stories of five remarkable Irishwomen who were pioneers in a variety of modern sciences and technologies. From the introduction by Alison, Countess of Rosse (the current Lady Rosse of Birr Castle):

This book gives us the lives of these five exceptional, but little known, Irish women. They achieved high recognition in scientific subjects at a time when women in the propertied classes were hardly allowed out of the nursery before their marriage, and schooling for daughters was very much an afterthought behind the education of their brothers. These five ladies, due to their own persistence and high intelligence, taught themselves astronomy, microscopy and photography, an unusual achievement in itself. But more than theat, they were to become experts in their fields and successfully pursued these ambitions, indeed, followed their stars. Mary Rosse won the Dublin Silver Medal for Excellence for her photography. Mary Ward [a cousin of the time's Lord Rosse -- SH] published authoritative works on astronomical subjects and microscopy and, by 1903, Margaret Huggins and Agnes Clerke were invited to become honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society.

(Mary Ward has another, sadder distinction: she was Ireland's first auto accident fatality, thrown from [and run over by] a Parsons invention, the "Road Locomotive," on the grounds of Birr Castle on August 31st, 1869.)

Diane and I will be going back to Birr Castle, the home of the remarkable Parsons family, in 2010, and will be combing the archives of these astonishing people and their friends and cohorts in the castle's archives room, which we had an all-too-brief look at in 2006. Look forward to more then here in SherWords... we sure do!

U Can Has Ur Lolcat Cuz I Can Has My...

(Detail from this receipt:

from today's visit to the neighborhood grocery store.)

Notice that they paid me $2.06 to take the item. Such a deal!

For anyone who somehow has managed to stay unaware of the lolcat phenomenon, click here for background.

Captain, Turn this Boat Around!

Looking Back for the Last Time (We Thought) toward Kilronan and Inishmore from Galway Bay, August, 2006

We're going back. Not next year, but the year after. Back to Galway Bay, back to the Bothy, back to Dublin, back to Birr. We're so giddy, we could just, well, expectorate, I suppose. Aside from the possibility of a global economic meltdown (even which may not be enough to prevent the trip), our only worry right now is caretaking of Ft. Harrington.

Giddy, we are. Big-time.

100: Forty-Two

Grace on her father's memorial bench, October 1, 2008. Photo from Adam.

This 100th installment of SherWords comes on the 42nd anniversary of Doug's birth. This year, Grace was accompanied to her dad's bench only by her mom, her Uncle Adam, and her Aunt Reva. I had to teach, but my heart was with them today, too.

For another picture marking the day, please visit today's installment of PicShers.

Auld Acquaintance, Not Forgot (2008 Update)

Ms. Kitty on the Birr Castle Demesne, August, 2006.

She doesn't have the international fame and acclaim of Ceiling Cat. She doesn't have the attention of the small, power-clique cognoscenti that Mojo el Jefe does. But she does have a nice little internet presence that manifests itself once in a while to Diane and me and lets us know that she's okay.



I refer, of course, to the Bothy Cat.

Eleven months ago, we heard from a Canadian-Irish knitter that Ms. Kitty was doing fine (click here go to that part of the SherWords archive.) Today, we received this e-mail from "Margaret," who, we presume from her aol address, is an American planning a trip to Ireland next year:

Mr. Harrington,

I just wanted to say that I very much enjoyed stumbling upon your photos
of your Ireland trip. We have rented the Bothy cottage for a week next
June and I was looking online for some commentary from others about the
place. Actually the Bothy cat page was the first one I found online.
What a marvelous surprise and extra bonus to find the cat in residence.
In emailing Lady Rosse to secure the reservation, I asked if the cat was
still there (at my 12 year old's insistence) and I am pleased to report
that it is. I'm betting that of all the things we doing in Ireland, the
cat will be what she remembers most when she's older!

Your pleasure with the time you spent there is evident in your
descriptions and photos, which made me feel better about reserving the
cottage "sight unseen" so to speak. Thank you for posting your
photographs online.

Regards,
Margaret

This is so cool.

I know from the server log that the Ireland, 2006, part of Diane's and my photo album website has received tens of thousands of hits courtesy of search engines, but a vanishingly-small fraction of those actually contact us with questions or thanks or whatever. And three-quarters of the ones who do contact us mention the Bothy Cat.

We will go back again, and, when we do, I hope she's still around to ignore us for the first week. Thanks to Margaret's e-mail, I know that right now she is, and that's good enough for this instant.

Mom & Me (Two Old Photos)

As noted before in this space, I've been spending a lot of time in this short summer's vacation populating my Flickr account. Most of what I've been posting there has been spiffied-up images from Diane's and my digital collection from 2000 to now, but I've put up a lot of my Dad's old slides (repaired and reconstructed), too. While doing so, my heart was melted twice by images of my mother.

Mom was a remarkable woman (as of course are all moms -- as Bullwinkle memorably said once, "I think that I shall never see/ a pome as lovely as a me/ for pomes are writ by fools, you see/ and only Mom can make a me.") But my Mom was especially so because she was my Mom, you know? I'll write part of her story here some day to convince you doubters.

Meanwhile, here are the two photos that puddled me up (click on each to be taken to a much finer view):

Gathering Wood for the Fireplace, 1953.

About to Leave the Nest, 1965.

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On Idle

Sausalito, September, 2008.

My college is one of the very few in California that is on the quarter system, as opposed to the semester system. This leads to oddly out-of-synch feelings at two times of the year: in June (when almost everyone's school year is over, but we're still dieseling on) and September, right now. I'm still on summer vacation (and will be until a week from this coming Thursday), but just about everyone else associated with any kind of school around here has been back on the job for weeks.

That makes me feel a little strange, but it makes me feel that little strange every year, so I have developed some coping mechanisms. The first is to work on preparing for the fall quarter, and there's plenty of that to do because I'm facing some interesting new challenges this year. The second is to work on preparing the Fort for the oncoming rainy season, and there's always plenty of that to do. And the third is to play.

A lot, that third. Play a lot.

Last year, we went to Disneyland. September is great there, because very few of those annoying short, young people are underfoot, and grownups can hog the rides all to themselves. HAH! This year, though, we're staying significantly closer to home, for a variety of reasons (one of which is travel costs, of course, but another is to save up for... well, I'll be coy about that for the time being.)

Looking toward San Francisco from Sausalito, September, 2008.

We took a day trip up to Sausalito last week as part of that playing. Someone was nice enough to park a pretty sailboat right in front of our favorite park viewpoint toward San Francisco:

Why the Italian flag, I don't know.

... and other boats posed delightfully on that late summer day:

Yachts in the Sausalito Marina, September, 2008.

View from our dinner table at the Spinnaker Restaurant (notice the reflections in the upper-left of the frame) -- the food was pretty forgettable, but, hey: location, location, location, not so much so. The tops of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge can be glimpsed at upper-right.

Inside Petri's art gallery, Sausalito, 2002.

For years, one of our favorite stops in Sausalito has been Petri's Gallery, where we ogle wonderful home-decoration sculptures, mostly glass, and purchase little trinkets. Glass art has been trendy in the San Francisco area this year because of the wonderful exhibit of Dale Chihuly's work at the DeYoung Museum. We didn't expect so established and proper a place as Petri's to try to cash in on that... but we didn't expect this, either:

No dogs either, probably.

We chatted with the gallery owner, as usual, for a while, and he was very circumspect about the "No Chihuly" sign on the door -- to paraphrase, he said that, well, he didn't want people to be disappointed, but, when we asked him about what he thought about Chihuly's work, he responded, after a long pause, "He's very good at what he does."

Which is exactly what I used to say -- pause included -- when people used to ask me what I thought of the late Carl Sagan. And probably for the same reasons. (Envy ain't one of them.) So I laughed hard, and he didn't know why.

Wally Nose-On.

We bought a trinket, as usual, but this time it wasn't a glass trinket -- it was a little bronze work by Tim Cotterill named "Wally." (Wally has 499 clones out there, so we don't have the only one by a long shot.)

Wally from the Left. In this election year, I'll leave it to someone of another persuasion to capture him from the right.

We have been tickled by Cotterill's frogs at Petri's for years, from back when they cost only about 1/5th what they do now, so we figured we should stop whining about how expensive they've become and just get one for hevvinsake. Besides, we had a perfect place for Wally:

Wally in Context.

Yep. He's at eye level for some of us. Here's lookin' at you, Adam.

Note the red container on the shelf above the water tank. It's a can of Faberge men's talcum ("Woodhue") that has been stalking me for my entire adult life. It was given to me as a high school graduation present 43 years ago by a friend of the family, and has followed me ever since I moved out of my parents' house to go to college, and through all ten moves since. I don't consider it a good-luck charm, it's not a particularly meaningful trinket -- but, damn, at this point I'd feel completely weird if it weren't around. It'll probably have to go into the ground with me at the end.

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Photos note:
Another thing I've been doing during this odd time off is populating my Flickr account. If you have one, please let me know, and I'll make yours a contact.

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