Late November Clan Subset Gathering

(Note: this post was composed using Microsoft's "Live Writer," which I don't think I'm going to use again.)

A subset of the extended clan gathered at Ft. Harrington on Thanksgiving (US variety) weekend to indulge in non-turkey feasting – and to gather up presents from Ireland that somehow had not yet been distributed.

Dessert Time. Clockwise from left: Grace, Andrew, Lynda, Adam, Gisella, Ryan (behind his mom), Mrs. Fort. Grace’s mom, Adrianne, had to leave before chow time.

Lasagna, salad, garlic bread (yummily not turkey, which all of us had over-ingested in other places the previous Thursday) followed by two kinds of pie: apple and pumpkin (pies accompanied by an ice cream option, of course) – Diane put on her usual fare with country flair.

Adam and Gisella, closer-up.

Gisella is Lynda’s daughter Jamie’s little girl, which makes her Adam’s step-granddaughter.

Which makes her my step-great-granddaughter!

Ryan and his hat from Donegal.

Ryan took an afternoon off from his waiter’s gig – and from studying for his EMT course. (If all goes well, he should be licensed for the latter by early next year.) He couldn’t bring the lovely Casey with him this time, but we all were thinking of her.

Adam and Grace with their Irish souvenirs. Note old Kelsey-the-Dog in the lower-right.

“My dad went to Ireland and all I got was this rugby shirt.”

Adam’s shirt – identifiably Irish by three discreet shamrocks about where Grace’s wrist is – came from Kenmare as did Grace’s cap. Her necklace is from Mullingar, as is a belt-watch for Andrew (which can’t be seen in the picture below.)

Andrew with Emma

Grace and her mom compare knit goods. The champagne flute is also from Mullingar.

In the above picture, Adrianne is not wearing a significant new piece of jewelry that she recently acquired: an engagement ring! She and her Ryan (“her” to distinguish from Diane’s Ryan) will marry in May or June.

Grace models her new bling. Notice Emma-the-Spaniel in the lower-left: she still absolutely adores Grace, and is never more than a few feet from the girl whenever she visits.

Now eight years old, Grace has developed a wide variety of facial expressions and uses them to great effect.

Grace and old Fonzie.

After the ruckus

Once the leftover containers had been filled and taken, after the last hug and kiss good-bye of the evening was done, the various animals in the Ft. Harrington menagerie had a variety of different reactions. Extremes of that spectrum are shown here. Jax, bred as Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are to be sociable and intoxicated by children, was exhausted, collapsed on his pile of pillows on the couch, and was dead to the world for hours. Finn McCool, on the other hand, still not comfortable with people he doesn’t know, hid under the bed all day, so when everyone left he was wound up, energized, and ready to rock and roll! If this were a video, you’d see his tail whipping back and forth.

I hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving weekend, too – and, from all of us at Ft. Harrington of any number of feet, we wish you a warm and happy holiday season ahead!

Some Glimpses of Christmastime, 2009

(Note: If you're not family, then this is probably too many snapshots to be of much interest. If you are family, it's probably not enough.)

Guinness observes the tree. Mrs. Fort did her annual wonderful job decorating the living room and kitchen with all manner of warmth for the season. (Speaking of Mrs. Fort, she doesn't much like the way I doctored this image in Photoshop, and you might agree with her if you look at this comparison of the pre- and post-alteration versions.)

Like last year, this year's big gathering was on Christmas Eve at Adrianne and Grace's (and now Adrianne's new fella Ryan's) home. Many more photos from that fete will show up in the album, but I particularly like this one (taken by Adam) because it shows her dad Pat and her brother Corey in the background. Wish you could taste the hors d'oeuvres on the tray.

Grace (left) and her friend Danielle serenaded us with Christmas carols...

... and Grace unintentionally channeled her father, who was also known to do the hair thing while performing:

Doug, performing with Defiance about a quarter of a century ago, complete with flying V and flying hair. (Photos of Grace and Danielle by Adam; photos of Doug courtesy of Jim Adams and Defiance.)

Adams: Jim A. at left, A. Harrington at right. Jim, Mike Kaufmann, and a renewed Defiance recently released their first new album in a while, The Prophecy, which includes a number of tracks written by Doug in his last months.

Diane and I had a leisurely Christmas morning to ourselves -- or as "to ourselves" as anyone ever is in a house with five cats and three dogs. Old Kelsey, a veteran now of a dozen Christmases, waited patiently by the tree for us to use our opposable thumbs to liberate the colorful paper and bows from whatever boring things they were wrapped around.

Fonzie and Cooper spy a brand-new cat-teaser being opened.

Sometimes you play with the toy...

...and sometimes the toy plays with you. Cooper's big, but not especially quick.

Emma asks us to please notice that the floor next to her has no toys or snacks on it because...

... her bratty brother stole them all. Notice that he has also filched a catnip mouse, even. There's a reason he's called "The Prince of All-Mine" around here. (It's actually not such a wonderful personality trait, resource hoarding, and one we have to continually discourage.)

Cooper, in the process of recovering his dignity.

Hope you had a marvelous few days, too! See you in 2010.

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Kelsey's Excellent Encounter

Usually when we have a weekend BBQ for family here at Ft. Harrington, there are many, many people involved. On Saturday, June 27th, 2009, though, we had an unusually small gathering: just Grace-the-Granddaughter, her mom (Adrianne), and her uncle Adam.

Old yellow Kelsey generally has an absolute gas at family gatherings, tripping happily from one person to another until he's so worn out that he collapses. With fewer targets this time, though, for some reason he zeroed in on Adrianne as the object of his attention.

In this little set, we see him wooing her, greeting her, and, ultimately, settling in happily at her side.

What a suck-up my dog is.

Adrianne, Kelsey, and Grace. Kelsey starts by placing himself where he can't be ignored.

Kelsey sandwich! Excellent!

"Please, let me introduce myself!"

"... I am a dog whose refinement belies my breeding, my lady."

(It's interesting to note how he holds his ears in this set compared to how he does when he's at work.)

Kissing the back of the hand is customary, but Kelsey's doing pretty well for a dog, don't you think?

She's let me sit here! Oh, the ecstasy! Oh, the joy!
Oh, the damn' little suckup spaniel, horning in from the left. He always does that.

Settled in.

Little does Adrianne know it, but, at this instant, Kelsey would have followed her through the very gates of Hell. He's also actively guarding her now; note the position of his ears.

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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.

Independence Day, 2008

In Adrianne's garden.

Several of the regular readers of this irregular blog posted articles celebrating Independence Day on July 4th: Mike did, Ruth did, Dann did, and even ronnie posted a wish for us from north of the unstressed border.

Selfish lizard that I am, though, I didn't. Instead, I chose to indulge myself by enjoying some of the benefits that ultimately came tumbling out of the events of 232 years ago. I spent the day taking a long, leisurely drive around the beautiful area I live in, the land around San Francisco Bay, and enjoying a gathering of the extended clan at Adrianne and Grace's house for a great barbeque. Thanks, Declaration signatories (and all the others who, through the years, have furthered and defended their vision); I enjoyed on that day the stuff you started. The only downer was that Diane couldn't accompany me, since she was still not feeling completely up to snuff after a little accident she had a few weeks ago.

Here's a top-down map of my wanderings (click the map to see a version you can actually read):

The light blue trail is my path to Adrianne and Grace's place in Pleasant Hill, while the purple one traces my return. The numbered spots indicate locations from which the photos below were taken. I tried to avoid freeways as much as practicable, given time constraints. If I was going to pay almost fifty bucks in gasoline for the roughly 200-mile round trip, I sure as shootin' was going to enjoy the ride.

Fair warning: what follows, especially the long section at the barbeque, will be of interest only to family, if them. But others are, of course, welcome to join us in virtuality!

The Ride Up to Pleasant Hill

Here's a perspective view, courtesy of Google Earth, from the Boulder Creek end:

(The termini of the routes marked are the centers of the towns, not our actual home locations. I'm not that unconcerned about putting such personal details out here on the web-o-sphere.)

Photo position 1, from a vista point parking lot along California route 35, also known as "Skyline":

Looking eastward. My destination today, Pleasant Hill, is beyond -- but not a whole lot beyond -- the most distant band of clouds (whose slight brown tint is due to smoke from the Big Sur fire, far to the south on the coast.) The water is San Francisco Bay, and the white patches are salt evaporators.

Photo position 2, in an old section of the town of Fremont in the East Bay:

This photo was taken specifically for, and in homage to, the world-famous Canadian blogging cat, Mojo, who is somehow under the impression that he is the President of Cuba.

I have no idea where that idea came from. Really. I don't.

Photo position 3, on Palomares Road, just off its intersection with Niles Canyon Road:

Niles Canyon provides a narrow slot through which a single-track rail line and a two-lane highway find a shortcut from the Livermore area through the East Bay hills down to the heavily populated flatlands by the Bay.

Palomares Road is a scenic ten-mile byway through the heart of the hills that generally parallel two busy Interstate highways: 880 along the East Bay's flatlands and 680 on the east side of the East Bay hills. I discovered it in October, 1989, when I was living in Oakland. The Loma Prieta earthquake of that month devastated normal transportation routes around the Bay for months after, and I used this road as part of an inventive-by-necessity daily commute from Oakland to Cupertino and back.

View to the east from Palomares Road.

At the Barbeque

Adrianne shows off the first season of her raised-bed vegetable garden!

Grace has become quite the swimmer: she's great at diving down to the bottom of the pool and retrieving the weighted rings. It is so very hard to adapt to the fact that she'll be six years old next month. By the time I do, she'll probably be seven. And then 15.

Grace's cousin, Kiana, and her aunt (and Adam's sister), Reva.

Grace and Kiana in the pool.

We had very special visitors from England at this celebration of separation therefrom: Adam's uncle John, the younger (but not youngest) brother of Adam's late mother, and his wife, Ngoc Thu. John, recently retired from a long and successful career at Reuters, is a naturalized British citizen. I had only seen him once in the past 40 years, and that one time was more than 20 years ago. I was delighted at how the years fell away with grace and ease. John is the fellow in the blue shirt; the guy in red is Bill Lombardo, who was a great friend of Doug's. Bill is a musician from, yes, that Lombardo family: Guy was his uncle.

John and Ngoc Thu live in the south of London most of the time, but they have a new second home near Lyon, France. Ngoc Thu is in dark blue, above. Adrianne, in green at right, is famously petite, but notice that Ngoc Thu is standing on a step, and, even then, is only a little taller than Adrianne. Like Adrianne, though, she packs a very large personality in a very small package.

Grace's step-granddad, Adam's stepfather, Reva's father, Kiana's grandfather, Parris, was there with his wife, Dierdre. They live in Grass Valley, California, now, which is where Diane's parents lived after her dad retired. It strikes me that some sort of diagram of this family's relationships to one another might be interesting. Or maybe even form the basis for a doctoral dissertation in sociology.


Uncle Adam and Kiana.

Through his voiceover career connections, Adam hooked Kiana and Reva up with an agent who now has Kiana doing professional photo modeling. I am not kidding; that's real.



"Sometimes my uncle is just so silly that it's beyond words. Rully, it is."

Adam and Lynda.
If you can, zoom in on the right lens of Adam's sunglasses (the left one, of course, from our perspective here.) You'll see a very proud father in the act of taking a snapshot of two wonderful people.

Adrianne's mom's dog, Jack, and I hit it off very well. He knows a sucker for small dogs -- or just a sucker, period -- when he sees one.

The Trip Home

Gramps heads out (photo by Adam.)

Google Earth perspective view of the trip home (the purple trail, at left.)

Photo position 4:

The trip back involved a ride down the length of Niles Canyon, starting in the village of Sunol (and its old-timey but functioning train station) at the top.

Sunol had its Warhol-McCluhan quarter hour of fame in the early 1980's, when its citizens sagely elected a black labrador retriever, Bosco, to be their mayor. The Chinese were famously not amused. According to this 1990 article in the New York Times:

One of the more unusual attacks on the United States came in February in a sarcastic front-page article in People's Daily and other newspapers, asserting that the idiocy of American democracy could be seen in the election of a dog as mayor of a California town called Sunol.

''Western democracy has reached such a pinnacle that there is democracy not only among human beings, but also with dogs,'' the newspaper crowed. It added that the election ''is a wake-up tonic for those kindhearted people who blindly worship Western democracy out of ignorance and naivete.''

Bosco, they hardly knew ye.

Photo position 5 (you'll have to go back to the first map to see this location; it's very nearly all the way back home in Boulder Creek):

Fog drifting into the San Lorenzo Valley.

The Jeep rattled home, over the Saratoga Gap on Highway 9, past this vista point (which we elegantly call "pee point" because of its handy latrine) at nearly sundown, with the Pacific's natural air conditioner flowing into the valleys of the redwoods. It had been a very good day, with the notable exception of the absence of my girlfriend.

And the absence of my older son. You didn't think you'd get through this entire post without mention of him, did you? Not yet, no, not yet.

Thank you, gentlemen below. I couldn't have done it without you.

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