School Lunches on Autopilot

Next week is spring break for our kids. We're staying in town and haven't planned much, but I'm as excited as if we were going to Hawaii for the week. Because I have five whole days off from making lunches.

Every morning as I pull out the lunchboxes I am reminded of what Dorothy Parker reportedly said whenever her telephone rang: “What fresh hell is this?” Some weeks I’m on a health kick, making sandwiches on high fiber high protein bread spread with soynut butter accompanied by fresh fruit, low-fat pretzels, and fruit juice. Other weeks it’s the path of least resistance: plain pasta with olive oil in a thermos, gummies (at least it says fruit on the wrapper) and a couple of Girl Scout cookies, alongside some chocolate milk. Whatever. I'll make them eat a banana when they get home.

In the morning I spend a lot of time crossing from refrigerator to pantry to microwave, stopping in the middle of the kitchen to think, sighing, trying to remember which girl likes pretzels and which one likes dried apricots, and then resuming the circuit. As a person who now packs an average of 40 lunches a month, I am awed that my mom found a simple formula and stuck with it, for three kids, for at least ten years.

The school lunches of my childhood were an object of envy, and not because they were gourmet. When you’re nine years old, the last thing in the world you want is a lunch that is different from every else’s, emitting garlicky odors or displaying shiny textures or unusual colors. In short: if you would pay top dollar to eat a particular dish at a top rated restaurant specializing in ethnic cuisine as an adult, it may as well be plutonium when it show up in a lunch box.  That’s why the lunches carried by the Davis kids were so darn right. They didn’t try to be anything but what we were: bland and middle class.

A sandwich, either peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and butter, peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff (catching a trend yet?) or the cheese sandwiches that my siblings and I used to tease my mom about, as she unwrapped the bright orange squares from their individual cellophane wrappers. “Mmmmm, American Processed Cheese Food Product,” we’d say, reading the cheese packaging label aloud and careful to stay just out of swatting distance. “My favorite!”

A single serving size bag of Fritos nestled alongside the wax paper-wrapped sandwiches. My mouth still waters at the memory of their fatty, salty, corn goodness pressing rectangular tracks onto my tongue, as I savored them in the cacophony of the Council Rock Elementary School cafeteria. 

Next into the paper lunch sack went a Hostess Ho-Ho, which is where my siblings and I exerted some individuality. My oldest sister always ate hers like it was corn on the cob, slowing rotating it and nibbling through the hard chocolate exterior then the cakey layer, until she got to the vanilla cream inside. My brother, disconcertingly referred to as "Little Larry" even after he'd topped 6 feet, could put one away in a single gulp. And I liked to break little bits of mine off and pop them in my mouth, examining the strata of the rolled pastry cake as I went.

At the bottom of the lunch sack was the shiny New York state Macintosh apple. That went straight into the garbage.

I don’t recall envying anyone’s lunch, or ever trading parts of mine away. There was no room for improvement as far as I was concerned, and I never complained about monotony. Who’s stupid enough to complain about a Hostess Ho-Ho?

Don't bother telling me that my kids are old enough to make their own lunches; you know it, they know it, and I know it. But it's not a hill I'm willing to die on. The fact is that the mornings they make their own lunches are filled with trauma and tears and they end up packing a 100% starch meal, whereas if I pack the lunch the trauma and tears are at least accompanied by 50% protein and fiber. It's simple math.

Frankly, if I was clever enough to come up with a lunch formula that would last for a decade, as my mother did, I wouldn’t care if resembled the food pyramid or a food pyre. It would be enough to have the whole process on autopilot.

Auntie Liar

My niece and her college roommate are coming out to the Bay Area this week for a visit, and we are all excited to show her around. I can only hope that Shannon will be a little less skeptical of her aunt this time than she was the first time she came to stay with me.

That was in 1995 or so, when she was four and Andrew and I were still childless and fancy-free, living in Washington, DC. My brother drove his family down for a visit, during which we ran them from the National Mall to the National Zoo and stopped at every museum in between, proud to play tour guide in our adopted city.

Shannon's older brother Zach, age 9 at the time, was totally on board with whatever Aunt Nancy and Uncle Andrew suggested. That's probably because the time he visited before, sans parents, Andrew let him drive our car. Only around the circular driveway of our apartment building, true, but still he was actually operating our Acura before he was legally allowed to sit in its front seat. Zach was ready to follow us anywhere. (The family had yet to be joined by its baseball-announcer-in-residence, my nephew Tristan.)

Huh. Mom, why is Uncle Andrew holding my braids?

Shannon, on the other hand, was at that stage of childhood where there is one authority and one authority only: Mom. Throughout the visit, as she sashayed and skipped alongside us with her Pippi Longstocking braids and purple dresses, she'd see something unfamiliar and ask, "What's that?" or "Why is that?" For instance, "Why are there so many pigeons here?"

I'd take her soft little hand in mine and motion to the sparkling white federal buildings and the food carts along the street, and say, "Well, Shanny, pigeons like to live in cities where they can find lots of food and places to build nests. They're city birds."

To which she would smile politely and say "Huh!" while fixing me with the same wary look you'd give someone wearing scrubs imprinted with the name of a psychiatric hospital: maybe staff, maybe not.

Then she would turn to my sister-in-law and say, "Mom, why are there so many pigeons here?"

My sister-in-law is indeed awesome, but the fact remains that she never lived in DC. Nonetheless, Shannon only wanted her answers from her mother. "What's that building with the white dome?" "It's the Capital, honey, it's where the senators work." "Huh. Mom, what's that building with the white dome?"

It drove me crazy, but how can you be mad at a kid whose parting words, as she departed in the family car, were, "I will come see you again to visit the baboooooooons!" an animal which we had neither seen nor discussed at any point during her visit.

Anyway. Now she's a grown-up college girl studying creative writing, and I am determined to show her the best the Bay Area has to offer: Union Square, Alcatraz, Dave Eggers' Pirate Store, a visit to the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Oakland hills, City Lights Bookstore, North Beach…the question is whether she'll believe anything I tell her, given that her mom isn't going to be here this time. 

So today's cheery Music Moment, from Philly hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang and called "Truth," is dedicated to Shannon and Sarah. (How can you not love a rap that includes the line "Periodically, I’m in my element, phosphorus," that isn't even by Flight of the Conchords?)  I swear, girls, if you have questions about the Bay Area, like why Happy Meal toys are banned in San Francisco or why Berkeley is a nuclear free zone, I am not making the answers up. The crazy here is for real.

Friday's Music Moment: Lives Well Lived

If you've spent any amount of time on this blog, you'll have read about Family Camp, the annual vacation to the Adirondack Mountains that my family has been taking every August since the 1960s. We're not that unusual; there are probably 15 other families who have also been coming since gas cost $0.36 a gallon. Family camp friendships are so deeply ingrained that when someone of our tribe gets married, there is the bride's side of the aisle, the groom's side, and the Family Camp section (usually in the back.)

So it's been a melancholy week, because we've lost another of the old guard - Bill Deyle. Taken together with Al Hooke in December and Bob Izard last year, we've lost three of the dads who infused the place with humor and integrity over the decades. They were the men in the terrycloth bucket hats and plaid shorts and worn-out tennis shoes who showed us how it was done - hard working career men who knew how to relax and enjoy the gift of their families and their Adirondack sojourn. It wasn't until Mr. Deyle hung the hammock across the porch of Pine cabin and called me by my sister's name three times on purpose that it felt like vacation really started.

Perhaps it was post-pregnancy hormones that made me delusional, but in the first year of our oldest daughter's life I was still confident that I could balance a demanding full time job with international travel and the work of being a new mom. So even though my August vacation had been approved months in advance, when a new supervisor suggested that my career depended on me flying back mid-week to join an all-hands international division meeting, I believed him and booked a flight from the nearest regional airport to Camp - a two hour drive away.

Still confident I was making a good decision, I mentioned it to Mr. Izard, himself a businessman when he wasn't spending the week sitting on an Adirondack chair at Double Decker cottage. "Gotta do what you gotta do," I said casually. 

He groaned and looked at me with a combination of empathy and concern. "Oh, Nance. You don't have to do this. Take it from me. You'll never remember that meeting, but you'll regret leaving your family mid-vacation."

Oh, hahahaha. What could you possibly teach me, Bob Izard?

The next night, as I sat crying in the ladies room at Dulles Airport trying to express milk that my nursing daughter wouldn't be awake to drink, the vast wasteland of the meeting behind me and a delayed flight and two hour drive ahead of me, I understood. The meeting had nothing to do with my career and everything to do with a new boss cracking the whip at someone over whom he wanted to demonstrate his power. I left the company within the year, and though I still sometimes struggle to reconcile ambition and family, I now have a rubric with which to evaluate any given choice. Which alternative leaves me without regrets?

To these men who put their families first, who contributed to their communities, worked hard, but weren't too proud to don a feather boa for a cameo in their grandkids' sketch on Skit Night, I say thank you. Sometimes when you're young and full of ideas of your own self-importance, you need a bank president who has volunteered to handle horseback riding sign-up to put things in perspective. 

I looked high and low for today's music moment and ended up with this one from folk singer Jeffrey Foucault, One for Sorrow. "One for sorrow, two for joy they say, I’ve had my fill of sorrow anyway." I've had my fill of sorrow this week.  But I'm sending in the Family Camp deposit today, so there's my joy. Hope you have a joyous weekend, friends - 

Friday's Music Moment: Vacation Brain

We spent the week after Christmas in Hawaii, having our brains turn to mush. That is, of course, the goal of a Hawaiian vacation, especially after such a frantic holiday season. We brought bathing suits, stacks of books, and virtually no ambition beyond a wish to float down some pineapple plantation irrigation ditches in an inner tube. (If you visit Kauai, it's a must.)

What I hadn't realized is just how much the Music of the Islands is designed to help. With 98.9 "Island Radio" playing on the rental car radio as we zipped around our daily circuit between coffee shop, shave ice store, and beach, we began noticing just how the lyrics of the songs in the 50th state are designed to be swallowed whole, no mental chewing necessary. It's best exemplified by "Hula Hooping Dancer" by Ray Leger, which we thought was a thirty minute long song but it turned out to just be on heavy rotation. 

The family came up with a basic rubric for ideal vacation music lyrics. First choose your pronoun, and set it in present tense (though who's tense around here?) Next, choose one of the following words: love, heart, sit, cry, or dance. Pair it up with guava jelly, grow stronger, like a rainbow, or ocean, throw in a mention of a local tourist site, and you are halfway to Hitsville. Here's the song we wrote in 30 seconds on the drive from Poipu to Old Koloa Town. (Note: there are scrappy wild chickens all over Kauai thanks to 1992's Hurricane Iniki, which blew the tops off all the coops.) 

"Sitting under the palm trees

Feeling a cool breeze

The chickens peck my eye

I feel like I'm gonna cry

Why? Why? Waimea Canyon."

See? Easy. I don't know if the rule holds true in the Caribbean but the fact that Bob Marley is a virtual poet laureate, what with his use of Biblical allusions, simile, and metaphor, makes me think it probably is.

But we're STILL not at the music moment yet. The vacation relaxing also extended to television screen time limits. During the frequent tropical rain showers, we trooped inside to the condo and parked our sandy butts in front of two TV marathons: The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, and Back the Future 1, 2, and 3. Regarding the former, all I can tell you is that we are considering sending an anonymous request on behalf of Clarice's owner to ask Cesar to come and adjust her using his magical Cesar Millan energy and his ch-ch-ch sounds. 

Regarding the latter, we only saw the last half of each movie, and the way Marty McFly jumped forward, backward, and sideways I never knew which one we were tuned into. The only consistent thing was McFly's high waisted jeans and the DeLorean.

The DeLorean. Hey, guess who has a new album - The Unfazed - out? Not the Spanish techno dance band the Deloreans, but the Doloreans, alt-rockers from Portland, Oregon. Here's a taste of their music. If you like Teddy Thompson, Mumford and Sons, and the Avetts, you might just like the Doloreans too. Though with a song titled "The Destruction" from an album called Violence in the Snowy Fields, it would never play on Island Radio.

Have a relaxing weekend, friends -

 

Freakin' Flier Blues

As I was boarding a transatlantic flight from the UK last week, it struck me how the airlines are doing their utmost to provide each passenger a customized flight. But not in a good way.

Back in the day everyone seated on the same plane was assured a relatively homogenous experience; linen napkins in first class and paper napkins in economy, of course, but we were all getting a meal and the same movie.

These days, aside from the fact that we're all on the same big metal bird together, passengers have radically different experiences during the flight. Depending on which options you choose (each with a separate price tag) you could be flying the Concorde, or riding a Turkish bus.

It starts when you buy your ticket. You don't just buy a ticket. You have to decide whether you also want to buy legroom, which is extra. You can also choose to breeze through the security rub and tug for an extra fee, or just crawl through like the rest of us. Lastly, you can check your bag in person, but that's going to cost you extra, and God help you if you bring more than one suitcase.

Once you get to the gate and - I must say, this is my absolute favorite demonstration of the pay-for-privilege mentality of modern flying - there are some passengers who board the plane after stepping on a 2 foot by 3 foot red carpet. For the rest of us, we board on a blue carpet, placed at the identical angle as the red one, but removed from it by about 18 inches. Can't you just feel the love? Don't sully our red carpet with your economy-class flying footwear, please.

Of course,  First Class Fliers, Premieres, Gold Members, 100k Fliers, Upper Classes, and God's Gifts all get to cross that red carpet long before the rest of us. By the time we come on board, the first class and business class fliers are reclined in seats sipping mimosas, their stockinged feet stretched out a full four feet away from them. Eye contact is awkward and to be avoided, on both sides, as the hoi polloi starts the trek towards the back of the plane, peering down the aisle to see where that toddler who flipped a garbage can in the waiting area is going to sit. Meanwhile flight attendants are hand feeding grapes to the passengers in Upper Class. You almost think you hear a lute.

Eventually you reach a section that is clearly NOT business class, where people are wrestling their bags and balling up coats as they stand in their small seat space and you think, "Oh well."And then - wait for it -   you realize this is Economy PLUS, where people have paid extra so they won't get blood clots in their legs while they fly. You, my friend, are even further on, where the cramped space of  Economy Plus that you just turned up your nose at is cavernous by comparison.

And so it goes for the rest of the flight. While they're eating off Limoges china in first class, you're shelling out $5 for a box lunch and $7 for a tiny bottle of red wine from Iowa. Forgot your headphones? No problem, as long as your credit card is still out. I haven't yet had to pay for a pillow, though I know some airlines are charging for them; how do you price a synthetic brick?

But still, it's a safe flight, only half of the Movies on Demand are from Disney, and your seatmate doesn't snore too loudly as she dozes. As the plane begins its descent you think, well, considering I paid a fraction of what they did up front, maybe I'm the smart one on this flight.

That's when the airline turns the knife one last time, with the speech about preparing the cabin for landing. They don't mention waking up the guy in front of you who has reclined his seat into your lap as though you are preparing to shave him, but it's implied. "Ladies and Gentlemen, if you are in Economy Class, please fold up your tray table and put your chairs in the upright position."

"However, if you are in Business or First class, please: stow your footrests, and retract your seat from its horizontal to its seated position. Put the HDTV screen back into the armrest, and don't forget to tip your masseuse. Your butler will bring you your coat and shoes, as well as stock tips. Did you get enough caviar?" Anyway, that's what I heard, but my ears were popping during the descent.

Have they really started charging us extra for cabin pressurization?

Friday's Music Moment - Gasoline by Enter the Haggis

A friend of mine who I’ll call Jonathan, because that’s his name, once taught me an excellent party game called “Poor Man.” When you’re bored or at a gathering where you don’t know anyone, scan the crowd for those people who, if you squint or look at only from the side or are thirty yards away from, sort of resembles a famous person. Then tell your companion, “There’s the Poor Man’s [fill in the name].” 

Poor Man is addictive, and I find myself playing it solo when I am running errands. Poor Man's Christian Bale goes to my church, Poor Man’s Melina Kanakaredes is a mom at my school, and I have a friend who is Poor Man’s Patrick Dempsey. In certain neighborhoods of Oakland favored by the cute young butch lesbians, you can’t swing a cat without hitting Poor Man’s Justin Bieber – though since his haircut looks better on a girl, I might just call the Biebs “Poor Man’s Cute Lesbian.”

While I was on vacation with my brother in August I taught him the game, the result of which is that we referred to the boyfriend of one of the other vacationers as Poor Man’s Jake Gyllenhaal for the entire week. As in, “Who was up at the archery range when you were there?” “Oh, a bunch of people: Mom, Josh, Shannon, David, and Poor Man’s Jake Gyllenhaal.”

I mentioned in an earlier post that my brother’s new favorite band is Enter the Haggis; this week Larry told me that upon further listening he’s realized they are the Poor Man’s Dropkick Murphys. Being of English Protestant descent, I will not say a negative thing about the Boston Irish Dropkick Murphys for fear that they would beat my absentee landlord ass. In fact, I will give them a compliment: they make Shane McGowan of the Pogues look tuneful. And I'll add that I like this song, Gasoline, by ETH, and admire five guys who can rip it up in skirts. Exit the norm, enter the Poor Man, friends - 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It's the first week of September, and I'm spending it the same way I do every year: airing out sleeping bags, wondering how many trips through the washer will be required to turn my socks from grey to white, smacking my boots together over the back fence to shake off the horse crap, and wishing the ibuprofen would kick in for my aching arms and back. It occurs to me that we spend an awful lot of money, time, and effort to travel on an Adirondack vacation each August in order to come home feeling like we've just survived minor combat.

I should perhaps preface this with a disclaimer. I've been advised that the sequel to the 1980's bestselling book, "The Preppy Handbook" recently came out and it names the Adirondack Mountains as one of the preppiest places in which to own a second home. And we do see the trust fund set while we're up there, thanks to an annual dinner invitation from an old family friend who is a member of the Adirondack League Club. 

The Club is a collection of Adirondack camp owners with names like Harrison and Blythe who like to get together for a weekly summer cookout, sitting at rough-hewn tables where they are served barbecued ribs and stiff drinks. They're a friendly folk, asking questions like "Where are your people from?" and "How can you stand living in Oakland?" and "I have friends who belong to the Bohemian Grove, do you know it?"

To be clear from the get-go, my family's Adirondacks is not that Adirondacks. We don't even own the cabin, though we consider it ours.

Laurel Cabin sits on the edge of Darts Lake, both of which are on the grounds of a summer camp run by the Rochester YMCA. During the summer months, the camp hosts children ages 7-16, teaching them throwback skills like archery, fort building, and horse riding. In winter the camp is used by snowshoers and cross country skiers, who revel in the muffling snow that covers the corral, the lake dock, and the tennis courts.

But the last week of the summer, the families arrive. For seven days the camp becomes our playground, with meals served at the Mess Hall, staffers overseeing our kids as they scale the rock climbing wall or dip lumpy wax candles or cannonball off the water trampoline. The adults tend to regress a bit too, slipping on the water skis or striding confidently towards the High Ropes course, brushing off last year's memories of strained muscles and torn tendons. Hence my sore arms and back: either they lengthened the lake, or two loops on water-skis feels a lot different to a forty-four year old than it does to an eleven year old.

Even in the years that we have a "good" chef, the food tends to resemble the opening credits of the film Napoleon Dynamite; no one is going there for the high cuisine. Fashion is confined to fleece, sweats, tshirts, flip flops, and rain slickers. I showed up at dinner one night wearing a belt over my sweater and was stopped six times by people asking why I was so dressed up. 

At Family Camp, evening activities run the nostalgic gamut from square dancing to bingo to talent night, with pit stops for Scavenger Hunts and bocce tournaments. I've had people say that my stories about camp remind them of the movie Dirty Dancing to which I must quickly say, "Keep the era and the booze, but hold the Swayze, Grey, big band, sex, glamour, and table cloths." My brother likes to say that camp is a place where you can let your freak flag fly; I'd just add that it'll probably be lost in the sea of other freak flags.

My parents first took their three kids to Family Camp in 1968; forty-two years later, there are twenty-two of us who show up for at least part of the week, putting a strain on the cabin's septic system that has earned us our own shrine in the camp maintenance barn. Ranging in age from nine to seventy-something, Laurel's residents include not just the immediate family but second cousins from Canada, sister-in-law's sisters, college roommates, and that bravest of souls: the new boy/girlfriend.

Despite or perhaps enhanced by the Calcutta-like crowding, Family Camp remains the touchstone of our lives, the shared vocabulary that colors our family conversations and influences our choices. Out of perhaps thirty-five families who attend, at least half have been coming since the sixties and seventies, making Family Camp the community with which I have some of my longest and strongest bonds. 

I'm not entirely sure when Family Camp went from being a vacation from our everyday lives to being the anchor for it. I was a kid who took permanency for granted; I never moved in the years between kindergarten and college, and my parents are closing in on their 52nd anniversary. My aunts and uncles and grandparents all lived within a few minutes' drive. I never even cut my hair. Of course we went to camp every August; what else was there?

It was only after I decided, perhaps inevitably, to seek adventure overseas that I began to value the predictability of our summer escape. During the early years of my career I might be in Germany, Hong Kong, or Japan for work, but I was always in Big Moose, New York at the end of August, and so were all the people I loved and needed to feel connected to. They reeled me back in and reassured me I'd always have a place, just like the loons on the lake or the bats diving at twilight. That let me set out again, ready for the next adventure of my life. 

Now that I have children of my own I think this sense of belonging, presented in a setting of natural beauty and physical challenges, is one of the greatest gifts I've given them. Their father is slightly less enamored of the whole "stay with your in-laws in a rustic cabin with bad food" vibe than the girls are, but even he sees the value of a place where our city kids roam with unaccustomed freedom, reporting back in at mealtimes on the horseback rides or hikes that they've taken without us. 

In fact if I reflect on what I want my kids to know, I'd say that I learned 90% of it at camp. Have a sense of humor, be good to the earth, don't be afraid to try something new, appreciate your family, prioritize, and never, ever eat the chicken patties.

Boom to Bust, 19th Century Style

We had ample time to contemplate the current economic crisis over the weekend, which was spent in Mokelumne Hill CA (affectionately called Moke Hill.) It's in California's Gold Country, a couple of hours northeast of the Bay Area, so about a hundred and fifty years ago, Moke Hill was suffering an economic hangover of its own. But it's held on, and a friend had rented outed the town's one hotel, the Hotel Leger, for a funky 40th birthday celebration for her husband.

First thing we figured out was that there's not a lot to do in Moke Hill besides hang out at the saloon or pool of the Hotel Leger. The town, which sprang up in the 1850s along with the discovery of gold in the area, was once so bustling that it was the county seat for Calaveras County (made famous in Mark Twain's story.) The picture, above, was taken in 1900, and that building is the hotel in which we stayed. The town has a great historical society and web site, source of all I now know about Moke Hill's history, including this snippet on Asians in Calaveras County.

Nowadays, Moke Hill is about one block long and as we stood on the balcony with our birthday beers on Saturday night and peered up and down the street we noticed two signs on every building: one, giving the year it was built and a bit of history, and two, a "For Sale" sign. We resolved to spend some money in the local establishments before we left and now I can tell you there's a good corn nut sale going on at Moke Hill Nuts, if anyone's got a hankering. And Frank's Diner makes the best cowboy biscuits this side of the old Hub Cafe.

The hotel itself was a great place for a party, but not for the faint of heart - aside from the Victorian period furnishings that had my 6'1" husband's feet hanging off the end of the bed, the place is also furnished with ghosts. We were booked in Room 7 which supposedly is haunted by George Leger himself; I took one look at the dark brown wallpaper and yellow light streaming through the window and begged them to change us to a ghost-free room, thanks. But the manager on duty said there's a failsafe way to avoid the spectral disturbance: "Just tell them. Say, 'I'm not interested in seeing you'," she counseled. "I do that and I've never seen them, but lots of my staff have."

So I was the lady running back and forth to the room for beach towels and cameras muttering "I don't need to see you!" if you passed me in the hall.

The people at the hotel and in the town were friendly and welcoming, and after buying beers all night at the saloon for our party and for the peppy SoCal bachelorette party that stopped by, my bar bill was $24.

The pool was great (if bracing) and there are rivers nearby for tubing; Calaveros Big Trees State Park is supposed to have good hiking, and Jackson has antiques and such. So I'm contemplating a visit back to Moke Hill with the kids in tow, and maybe some Mark Twain short stories to read in the car on the way there. And some holy water and garlic.

Where Time Stands Still

There are so many ways in which my kids' childhood diverges from the one I had in the 70s. Not just the obvious things, like them growing up in urban California and me in suburban upstate New York, but smaller things, mostly technology driven: they live in a world where anything they want, information-wise, is right at their fingertips on the Internet, and where they can reach out and connect aurally, visually, or in text form to anyone they know, anywhere, anytime.

The girls are sizzling with information and connection in a way that was just unheard of when I was a kid, raising issues, opportunities, and fears that I never dealt with. I thudded along with World Book Encyclopedia and face to face confrontations with the schoolyard bully, while they use Wikipedia and, with one daughter entering middle school this year, a whole new uncharted territory of digital peer interaction.

So it struck me last week, while on my annual vacation in the Central Adirondacks at a Family Camp run by the Rochester NY YMCA, that it is the only place and time in which our respective childhoods converge. My family has been attending this weeklong camp, which I've written about for Adirondack Life, since 1968, and about the only thing that has changed there, besides a couple of building face-lifts, is that the staff lounge now has two Internet-enabled computers.

Other than that: the mist still rises off the lake in the morning, pulling back the curtain on a pair of dark singing loons - and the human loons who make the 7 am trek to the waterfront for "polar bear swim." The horses in the barn still need feeding and brushing before reveille, and little girls gladly jump at the chance to do that scut work. The sailboats still need draining, the lifeguard always falls for the ski boat driver, the sound of basketballs smacking the court rings from one end of the property to the other, and the square dance always starts with the Hokey Pokey so parents can put their exhausted children to bed by 9 pm to rest up for the next day of non-stop action.

As I'm standing at the corral fence, watching my daughters mount up their horses for a ride down the Raspberry Trail, I'm keenly aware of the memory of my mother doing this for me, 35 years ago...memory made sweeter because she's standing here beside me now, watching my kids. It reminds me of the old days in school when a teacher would layer one transparency over the other on an overhead projector, matching up the edges of each and deepening the image with detail.

Before I was married I would say that camp was my touchstone - no matter where I was living or what I was doing, the last week in August would always find me there because that's where my brother, sister, and parents would be. It was a great comfort, and now, even though my touchstone is wherever my husband and children are, I still feel a compass pull to the lake and the cabins that surround it.

For my children I guess the effect will be even stronger - our cabin went from holding five Davis' during my youth, to now nearly 20 Davis', Davis IIIs, Berrys, Khos, Arras' and Packards, all related in the widening spider web of family. Whereas camp was a fun family getaway for me, for my California-raised kids it is the single time of the year where they get to spend hours and hours with their New York family (who spoil them rotten.) That combination of non-stop physical activity in a gorgeous setting with a huge dose of family love - that's a gift worth handing down through the generations.

An Open Letter to the Post Op Tranny on My LA Flight

Dear Sir/Madam:
When you came tottering down the aisle of a half-empty plane on your 5 inch heels Tuesday, I was not surprised that you sat down next to me; I figured that was as far as you could walk in those hoopty shoes without stumbling. The bustier and mini you wore might have been more at home in a club than on a Southwest flight, but no matter.

You gave my friend and I a sweet smile, we all said our hellos, and then you settled in for the 50 minute flight up north.

"Settling in" for you, of course, meant arranging and rearranging your two gigantic patent leather hobo bags under your seat, taking out an ironically named "compact mirror" the size of a dinner plate and staring into it for minutes at a time, all the while searching through your bag for various unguents and applying them to your face, your weave, and your muscular bare shoulders. When my friend and I started talking about Pulitzer Prize winner Marilyn Robinson's book "Gilead," you made sure to pull out your own reading material and arrange it just so on the tray table (though after that you never touched it.)

At one point as you dove back into your bags again I was reminded of traveling with my kids when they were toddlers and had to resist the urge to say, in that bright motherly voice of approval - "You are so BUSY!"

You, my friend, were 6 plus feet of chocolatey goodness, and you knew it. You may not have seen the entire flight crew leave the cabin to watch you saunter down the jetway turned catwalk after we landed, but I know you sensed it.

And that is why I am posting this letter. A ladyman lady who has worked so very hard to be attractive, really applied herself to the task, needs to know this: PICKING AT YOUR BEARD FOR THE ENTIRE FLIGHT IS A REAL TURN-OFF. Did you not see me clawing at the seat rest that separated my traveling companion and I, trying to get onto her lap? Picking and flicking: not ladylike. Ever.

And as long as I'm on the subject of impolite, could you have please retracted your giraffe legs from under the seat in front of ME and put them under the seat in front of YOU?

Ok. Thanks. Bye.

Travel Story in the Chron - New Zealand by motor home

The story I wrote after our March/April visit to the North Island of New Zealand ran in today's San Francisco Chronicle - http://digbig.com/5bacgf. Here's a picture of my family with the beast, while we were in Russell, in the Bay of Islands...

All credit to my husband who actually maneuvered our camper van on the left hand side of the road, shifting with his left hand (luckily he's a Southpaw so maybe it was actually easier?) I can't drive a manual transmission in ANY country, so without Andrew it never would have happened.

Two countries divided by a common language

Further to my "what I had to leave out of my campervan travel story" post from yesterday, I'm back to provide a handy Kiwi to American English glossary. We realized we'd need one of these on our second day of the trip. We were visiting the seemingly kitschy but actually very cool "Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World." It was the brainchild of New Zealand native Kelly Tarlton, "Diver, dreamer, explorer, inventor, instigator, worker, storyteller and father; a man who linked us all with his love of the sea." He fulfilled his life dream of creating an aquarium in 1982, housing it in a disused sewer on the Auckland waterfront (you descend a flight of stairs from the street level to get to the aquarium.) Sad that Tarlton passed away at only 47, 2 months after his aquarium opened and on the same day that its 100,000 visitor arrived.

We loved riding the Snow-Trac past the colony of Gentoo and King penguins, and passing beneath the shark tube attraction, and watching the sting rays get fed by a perky wetsuit-clad docent. There were lots of other cool fish to see and learn about in tanks throughout the building.

But we were puzzled to read that the stonefish, "the most venomous fish known to man," could sting us through our Jandals.

What? Surely getting stung through the Jandal is not good, but exactly how bad is it?

On the ride home in the shark-topped Tarlton shuttle, the driver cleared it up for us - jandals are flip flops, which explains why a bottom-dwelling fish might sting you there. Later in the trip I bought Classic Kiwiana by Richard Wolfe and Stephen Barnett in which it explained that the term derived from "Japanese Sandals "observed by Aucklander Morris Yock on Japanese swimmers at the 1956 Summer Olympics (though that claim is hotly disputed.) Yock made the switch from wood to rubber and a Kiwi icon was born.

A few other terms we noted along the way:

• Hundreds and Thousands = Sprinkles (handy for ordering ice cream and Fluffies)
• Prang = Fender bender
• Merge Like A Zip = Merge (as in driving)
• (Adjective) As! = Very (Same Adjective). Kiwi As, Warm As, Easy As, ... "C'mon in, the water is warm as!"
  
• Bash Out A Text = Send a Text Message
• Flash Name = Nickname
• Hardcase = We are still confused about this, it's on Champion Rugby league ads all over the country and we think it means something like a fanatic, but there's a shade of difference that no one every really got across to us. We should probably go back and ask more questions.

So many words, so little page space

Before I left on vacation I pitched the story of "New Zealand by Campervan" to the SFChron's travel section, and was gratified when they agreed to take a look at it on spec. (They never commit to a freelancer's piece until it's in hand, which isn't unusual. Think good publishing thoughts for me.)

So with my head still full of Fluffys and Jandals last week, I banged out the start of a really good piece on the ins and outs of campervanning. The problem is, I had just started on the good stuff when I ran smack into the 1500 word count to which I was strictly limited (and that had to include all the "If You Go" info like air fares and website addresses.)

What to drop? Well, by the time I was finished, pretty much everything that didn't support the theme of the piece, which was that driving a ginormous left hand driver manual transmission camper van was hairy, but only for the first few days and completely worthwhile afterwards. I'm happy with how it turned out but oh! what was left on the cutting room floor:

• Kiwisms like Fluffy and Jandal
• The Strange Fascination Kiwis have with Australians
• Conservation, Kiwi-Style
• Really? Another Red Light on Federal Highway 1?
• If I'm Speaking German, We Must Be in New Zealand

Not to mention the saga of the Unremovable Toilet Cartridge. And if there's one thing I am, it's a communicator. So with your forbearance I'll be sprinkling a few of those stories here and there in the blog posts to come. In the meantime, I'll leave you with my photo of a perfect Fluffy: a steamed milk served with chocolate on the top and marshmallows on the side, and you can ponder what noise 8 and 11 year old girls make when they are too sugared up and bouncing off the walls of a campervan.

Friday's Music Moment: Aoteoroa

We were in Te Awamutu last week, to visit the town museum in which there is a permanent Split Enz exhibit called True Colours. A bit of a pilgrimage, really, and when we walked in this video, "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" was playing on the video screen. It's one of Split Enz's best known hits especially outside the Antipodes, and a catchy song...just ask my friend who played it for her sons while we were gone and now has two sub-11 year old Split Enz fans in her house.



It's certainly not a new song, but now that I've been to NZ I see it through new eyes. To wit: the boat motif is pretty obvious in a country where the furthest you can ever be from the ocean at any time is something like 180 km. Auckland (the Finns' home base) has the highest per capita boat ownership rate in the world. And I love seeing the Maori dancers and their moko (facial tattoos.) We saw a lot of Maori people in NZ with partial or full moko, and picked up the latest issue of MiNDFOOD magazine with a big photoarticle on the subject.

And, OH! Aoteora! THAT's what they're saying at the 2:30 mark, the Maori word for NZ that means "land of the long white clouds." It was the wife of the first Polynesian explorer to NZ, Kupe, who coined the term - thanks Wally theMaori bus driver in Paihia for the explanation.

Finally, and I'm just keeping it real here, there's the suggestion in this video of Neil's monobrow. According to some of the archival footage at the museum, that was fully present back in his Te Awamutu days. Then again, if anyone hauled out photos of any of us at 17 and put them in a museum, we'd be in for a world of embarrassment.

Achilles suffered through our absence

NOT.

Here he is lounging on his bed with his friend Nico. This is how he spent his two week Kho-free vacation, although the dog sitter tells me that more often than not Achilles slept in Nico's tiny bed and Nico got the big bed to himself.
















For our part, the girls missed him terribly and made me take this picture of a building in downtown Auckland to show him.

















I will say that it is nice to be back in the office with the dog snoring on his bed across the room. Seems all is right with the world.

Fifty Golden Years

Somehow it was fitting that last week, the culmination of one of the most exciting presidential elections ever, was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. My father is a Republican and my mother is a Democrat, and for half a century they've been cancelling each other's vote and then going out to breakfast together on Election Day. If that doesn't say "lasting love" then I don't know what does.

I haven't posted since last Friday because I flew to my hometown of Rochester NY to surprise them at the small family gathering they'd planned. I would love to have been sharing stories - of my long delays on my JetBlue flights, an airline that I am sad to see has gone down the tubes right along with the rest of the industry. Or of my childhood friend who read my Facebook profile and figured out that I was coming home before I'd had the chance to call her, making social networking more efficient than actual networking. Or of my Flip Mino camera, which enabled me to play greetings from my kids on my parent's TV and record Grandma and Grandpa's greetings to take back home with me with such utter ease that it wasn't the least bit intrusive.

But my parents have been nothing if steadfast in two things: their marriage, and their utter lack of interest in anything faster than dial up for their internet connection. I just don't know how we all coped back in 1992 when dial up was the only speed we had. Oh. My. Lord. The thought of trying to get onto Blogger to post was crazy making. So I unplugged for five days, enjoyed the company of my weird and wonderful family, and was actually happy to see snow fall.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad (pictured here with all eight of their grandchilren.) May your love last as long as it takes to download an Apple QuickTime update to your laptop.

Friday Music Moment - Easing into a Lazy Weekend

As we pack up for a weekend at a beach house in Bodega Bay, I'm feeling like we need just the right anthem...so I'm posting a Neil Finn acoustic clip of "Throw Your Arms Around Me." This is a classic crowd pleaser, showing up at just about every Finn-related show as an audience sing along.



Not for anything, but I'm bringing my Fodor's New Zealand guidebook along with me to read for inspiration this weekend...

Back in the land of fog

We arrived home from our two weeks of East Coast summer humidity on Saturday...hard to believe it's the same season here in Oakland, with the fog blanketing the Oakland Hills until late afternoon. After nearly 11 years on the West Coast, that New York/Vermont mugginess followed by cracking thunderstorms followed by cool breezes still says summer more, I have to admit.

This vacation should have been subtitled "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be New Hampshire." We decided to cover a lot of ground in our rental car, a.) to see lots of family and friends, b.) to see part of New England that we've never visited before, and c.) so we could turn around in the front seats and yell things at the children like, "Clam up! I once had to drive from New York to FLORIDA with my family, and I never complained once!" Success on all three counts.

Hard to choose favorites but we definitely liked Old Sturbridge Village (pictures from the shoemaker's workshop above), the Emily Dickinson Museum, and the gigantic 15 foot wide bean bag chairs at MassMOCA. Lots of close encounters with agricultural life via Shelburne Farms and the Monroe County Fair, and lots of donuts.

But it sure is nice to come home to our own beds, Peets coffee, and one very excited German Shorthaired Pointer.