Winter's Dusk in Long Beach

The time of day made the ocean look an impossible shade of blue, mostly illegible in the below picture:

From a distance the blue screamed out. Electricity turned blue from lightning strikes' white.

Happy Holiday's from the edge of the continent!

RIP Dollar Bookstore

Pour some out for the homies...

In an unsurprising move, the Dollar Bookstore will be shutting its doors permanently this December 24th. Its nearly 60k+ square feet of book madness will be missed by the random locals like myself and the waves of tourists and visitors to the Long Beach convention center directly across Pine Avenue, the main thoroughfare. The following picture is from the stairway of the Convention Center, looking down on the corner establishment, originally a Borders bookstore:

It has easily been my most favorite non-beach location to visit in Long Beach. The shelving did originally have a system. First edition hardbacks to one side of the front section, paperback fiction between the entrance and the hardbacks:

Romance paperbacks against the yellow wall with sci-fi, fantasy, multi-cultural, and literature shelved in front of the yellow wall, leading to the steps down to the back two-thirds:

At the bottom of the steps was the comic book section. With each comic costing a dollar, you've found one of the few NON-deal sections. I did, though, find and purchase a Deathmate: Black, the hottest comic around back in 1992-3 when I was collecting--it was the first appearance of Gen 13.

Turning away from the comics affords a view of the rest of the place. Stretching back into the distance the sectional organization begins to break down:

Some sections are labeled non-fiction, others history, some biography...I haven't even shown pictures of the religious or self-help or travel-book areas. All the way back against the back yellow wall is the sports section, a place I would go to look for one book specifically, but usually found the occasioanl gem.

In the picture below, against the gray/beige wall on the right side used to be the OLD books, the antiques. That was where I discovered Chandler Brossard among other forgotten treasures:

The cartons in the foreground of the above picture belie the truth: they are getting ready to be "relocated."

In our final trip together, Corrie and I found nine books to purchase. Each represented a different facet of the awesome discoveries that were made by those willing to search. Here's a picture of all nine:

It may seem like random collection of forgotten objects, and it is. But here's a closer look at each row and how each fit into the larger picture of our Dollar Bookstore as the book p-trap on this continent's edge, saving all random publications...

The top row seen above is made up of three books. On the right is a hardbound National Geographic production of Yosemite material. It is a beautiful publication. Many of these encyclopedic-like items filled the shelves of many an elder, and in the years since these elders have passed, books like these eventually float on down to our DB. No advertisements, beautiful color photos, smartly put together. Only a buck.

In the middle above is something called "The Yankee Pioneers: A Saga of Courage". It is a tiny history book resembling something available at my elementary school library. It turns out the writer, Sam Pettengill, was a congressman from Indiana and was a descendant of Ol' Man Pettengill, a settler who was one of the early colonizers of the newly formed Vermont territory. This little book explains in painstaking detail what the first thirty-or-so years of settling the endless forests of New England was like. Have you ever wondered how long it took to go from "nearest neighbor five-to-ten miles away" to "first street larger than a trail laid down in a 'town'"? That's the kind of information detailed here. Wild. (Turns out that out it took between 25 and 35 years.)

That first book, the red one of the left, isn't a book per se. It is the London Museum's booklet/informational packet for the Rosetta Stone, detailing the importance of, creation of, and rediscovery of said stone tablet. It was such a dense and beautiful little booklet that I had a hard time putting it back. When I saw the original price the museum was charging, I decided to get it myself. It was marked at 5 pound-sterling. There are the occasional program from ballgames or European operas found among the piles at our DB, this one was likely the most beautifully produced.

The middle row has another three books that represent different types of discoveries. The first is disgraced crooked NBA referee Tim Donaghy's "side of the story". This isn't a POD book or a personally published material, but those exist in numbers (it always amazes me how many people have their written material printed as books across the country). This book exists in the even smaller margins of mixing "mostly major publisher backing and non-athlete sports pariah" with "vanity/self-promotion purposes". His side of the story is very interesting to me, and what he has to say about the integrity of NBA games has my head tilted.

To get a sense of the weird duality of this book, the "serious book" versus "personal publication" category fight, see: 1) the forward is written by Phil Scala, the retired fed that brought down John Gotti; and 2) on the back cover it directs readers "For more information visit www.timdonaghy.com".

I'm using it as a gift for an NBA-fan relative.

The middle book above was a limited release edition written by Tripp Underwood, bass player for The Unseen, an LA punk band. It has its original cellophane cover, yellow sticker proudly announcing the limited release status and what else is included--exclusive music tracks. This is another side to the wares found at our Dollar Bookstore. If The Unseen were more famous, this cellophane wrapped book would be worth far more than the dollar I spent on it. It started out, I hear, as a history of the ban written for the band's site. Tripp was offered a book deal to expand it, and now it has a tour diary component. Good for him, and good for them. I'll be checking it out pretty soon.

The book on the right, if you can't make it out, is As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Another aspect of the Dollar Bookstore: the random classic. I got this because it was only a buck. It gives me something to take to work and hand out to receptive young people and not worry about seeing it again, as well as another Faulkner book to peruse. (I stopped reading Sanctuary a while back...)

The last row, seen above, has three books that seem like they would be in place in a normal used book store if not a regular Barnes & Nobles. The wear they've incurred make the Barnes & Nobles quip seem suspect, but anyway...

Living in a Nutshell is a beautiful little book about design that focuses on solutions for homes that are small. Corrie liked it. "On the Rocks" is a collection of short stories culled from writers who joined the KGB Bar writer's group. There are some name-recognition writers listed, which makes this a nice risk as a gift. The KGB Bar is in Manhattan.

Uppity Women of Ancient Time, another gift, is one from a series of humorous renditions of historical figures and the context from which they came. It's perfect for a strong-willed and outspoken girl cousin of mine.

Those three books are interesting enough, but we may not have bit on any of them had they cost more than a dollar each, right? I'm not spending six dollars on a used copy of As I Lay Dying unless it's obviously a collector's item. But one dollar?

That's also one of the real problems concerning the sustainability of the Dollar Bookstore of Downtown Long Beach. I am a local, regular customer. In the three or four years I've known about the bookstore I've bought probably an entire shopping cart full of books. I hand them out as gifts or use them to pad my library with their importance. It's quite unbelievable what I've been able to find.

I'm also a total book nerd, and have learned about publishers old and new, large and small...this store was an index of the long lost, the long forgotten, the neglected.

This sustainability problem I just mentioned is this: I don't think I've spent a hundred bucks total since I've started going. Certainly not more than two-hundred, but let's use that as a cap. I'm a regular visitor and patron, buying all sorts of things, but in all that time, all those visits, I've haven't spent more than $200.

That always seemed like a hard balance to create: the kind of revenue generated by selling rectangles of paper for a buck each just seems insufficient to support over 60k square feet of retail space in an-up-and-coming commercial area of Downtown Long Beach. Time seems to have supported that hypothesis.

This spot, for a bookworm like me, was always too good to be true. I have enjoyed it as much as possible, even to the chagrin of my wonderful wife. It shall be wistfully remembered.

$20 on My Library

The following pictures show off, using arrows, how books from the Dollar Bookstore can be seen populating my shelves:

I found Camus' The Fall there, as well as all my Richard Flanagan copies. Gould's Book of Fish I found at least twice and bought it each time I was there, no matter what. I used them as gifts.

If you can't see, on the left is Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Woody Allen's Without Feathers. They also had a nice collection of Guterson and the only copy of a Mishima book they've ever had.

I picked up both copies of Catlin's work in the Wild West (his paintings and letters are as beautiful as they are important). They also had the Ishii book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and the book of Japanese Fairy Tales.

Lot's of Russian revolutionary material was available, as was the Titanic sequel and a book by George Pelecanos, a major contributor and writer for The Wire.

Just perusing my shelves means the memory of the Dollar Bookstore will never die in our household. It has played an integral part of my understanding of how cool Long Beach is, and a little piece of unbelievable magic will perish at 10 pm on 12/24/2014, when the doors shut for the last time.

Movember Meets Sherweezy for the First Time

I'm working on a project called "They Call Me Sherweezy", or something similar, about working in South Central and the harbor area and trying to figure this whole thing out. Sherweezy is the hip-hop inspired nickname I picked up in the 'hood last year.

Anyway, Halloween was on a Friday this year, and I stopped shaving around that time. It wasn't so much for the "No Shave November" or "Movember" movement to raise awareness for prostate cancer, it was more because I was tired of the constant need to shave. That Movember was also happening was pleasantly coincidental.

That and my nearly 150 young wards all figured that was the reason behind the facial hair.

We had the entire week of Thanksgiving off, which meant that we wouldn't meet again until December. After three weeks I had a pretty well established beard, and thought I'd have some fun with it.

I was interested in trying out some new technological shenanigans, and used Poll Everywhere, a website that allows you to set up polls that people can use their phones and texting to vote on. I grabbed a series of pictures from the internet of various facial hair designs and left my look on the Friday before Thanksgiving break up to my kids' vote.

The choices were: "the Abe Lincoln"--sideburns and chin but no mustache (AKA "the Amish"); "the Chester A. Arthur"--sideburns to mustache with clean shaven chin; "the Wolverine"--big bushy sideburns only; "the Dude"--a goatee only; and finally, "the 'Stache", just a simple mustache and the one I wanted the least.

Throughout the day as each session got to vote, the results fluctuated. I was going with whatever won out over the course of the entire day. This was a Monday and I planned on shaving that Thursday night to have the hair on Friday. The Wolverine held an early lead, and while there was a late push for the 'Stache, the Chester A. Arthur finally came out on top.

Oh my...

When I cam in on Friday looking like this, nearly all my kids said "Oh my god, you actually did it!" My favorite response came from one of my older kids who didn't now what was going on. She took one look and starting nervously shaking her head, saying, "Oh, no no no, no, Mr. Sherwood, no..."

I learned that had I been from a different time period I could easily rock a shaggy Chester A. Arthur facial hair design. Maybe I'll try bringing it back...

A mentor and colleague said that my street cred skyrocketed as a result of the move. That wasn't exactly what I was going for, but I'll take it.

My face was confused. Normally my chin wouldn't be cold, but on that Friday it was. It was like wearing a parka but walking around bare-assed.

I shaved minutes after I got home that same Friday. When I met with my wards this past Monday, before sickness has me chilling at home today, many voiced their opinion that I should have let it keep growing, like they wanted to live vicariously or something through an interactive chia-pet-face.

Post-Apocalyptic Movies and Descriptive Titles

There is a sub-genre in the science fiction realm dedicated to post-apocalyptic scenarios. Many films in this zone have easy crossover appeal with horror when zombies are involved, or pandemics (like The Stand; or 28 Days Later, which mixes both).

I grew up with Mad Max and the spectacular flop Waterworld. I don't remember hating Waterworld, but I do remember thinking it wasn't good enough to beat down the built-up head of steam of popular-consciousness hate that followed it from production to post- to screenings to its opening. What can you do? Aeon Flux is another one...

So, the post-apocalyptic movie I'm going to mention now is Snowpiercer. I remember reading a bit about it over the summer and had wanted to make a trip to the cinema to see it. It didn't work out, as we'd have to get all the way to Hollywood to find one of the five screens that was showing it.

It's on Netflix now. GREAT flick.

One thing that got me, and gets any other discerning viewer, is the premise. That goddamn premise. An attempt to combat global warming has gone horribly wrong and an ice age has been induced. Earth's surface is cold and dead, and the only humans left are riding around the planet on a train that is on a global track.

The story is based on a French graphic novel from 1982, and this film is directed by Joon-ho Bong, the Korean director of the great The Host, one of the gems Netflix makes available to your eyeballs.

In this story the last two cars are where the lower class lives, and maybe that should be "lives" with the quotes. They are perpetually on the brink of starvation, subsisting on black gelatinous protein bars (the contents of which you see later as a nice a reveal) and are kept in line through brutality and a religiosity that becomes more apparent as the movie progresses. As a form of punishment, Spud from Trainspotting has his arm put through a portal into the freezing night for the requisite seven minutes, and upon it's return to the inside of the car, is smashed to bits with a huge mallet.

Captain America plays the "hero" who starts the revolution and the march from the tail of the train to the front. There's so much death along the revolutionary march that it's hard to believe that survivors can really keep the gene pool deep enough...

Anyway, the cars along the way to the front get steadily more bizarre. One is a elementary school classroom where the children sing in unison about what happens if the train stops: "We all freeze and die!" they cheerily shout.

The ending makes you remember viscerally that the director is not American. But, really, if your idea of the survival of the human species is to perpetually ride a train, the game may already be lost.

Days before we watched Snowpiercer I told Corrie about it. At the end of the week she said, "Oh, we should watch that movie Snowtrain." She has an adorable habit of changing the names of movies to be more descriptive titles than actual names, especially if the name is cryptic. 

I believe it's because she simply doesn't care that much. Cowboys and Aliens, a generally lame movie but with a title that is a play on "cowboys and Indians", to Corrie becomes the more appropriately titled Cowboys vs Aliens. Movies just aren't things that for her are worth much brain power outside of the experience and our conversations about it directly after the fact. 

She sees subplots and generally what the director's up to; she understands foreshadowing and the elements that make the moving-picture experience pleasurable, she just doesn't really care that much. There's too much other real shit in the world going on to be concerned with movies.

In one minute Corrie can talk about the forced and characteristic whimsy in The Grand Budapest Hotel and relate it to a grand scheme of Wes Anderson's views on family that seem to stitch his movies together...

...and in the next minute tell someone, "Oh, we went to go see the new Star Wars movie," when in reality she's referring to Star Trek Into Darkness. For her, it's in space, there's a battle, or conflict, or something...so Space War? No that's not a thing...Star Wars, yeah, that's a thing... 

She's funny. We were just talking about it the other day: 

Me: It's like when you told Adrian about seeing Star Wars last year...

Her: Whatever. I know the difference. One has Jean-Luc and one has Luke and Leia. See? They're both in space, so...meh....

Me: (Laughing) What we went to see didn't have any of those people...

She does, though, pay attention to me when I talk about nerdy things, so she's pretty well versed on the intricacies if you pressed her. Same with sports. She knows more about A-Rod's contract status than any baseball-hating wife non-fan probably should.

Feeling Like a Kid Again

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. It was a combination of many factors I was deeply interested in at the time: death-defying adventure and high-velocity travel. Honestly, those remain interests.

But SPACE! Space was about the coolest thing this side of dinosaurs.

In the last twelve months twice I have ventured to the cinema-house to enjoy high doses of spectacle, the dreams of my childhood consciousness finally hitting a double movie crescendo.

Last year we left the Pike Theater wide-eyed and giddy with the prospect of free-falling around the entire planet during a shitty day at work. Last year it was Sandy and Georgie in Alfonso's Gravity. Last year it was the slow twirl of the initial fade-in to see the noob, Sandy, just trying to maintain on her first duty: tightening bolts. Yup, I remember nodding in the darkened theater, some days at work kinda suck, but most aren't 250 miles above the ground.

The mundane painted across the spectacle of an entire continent below using a brush heavy with nausea. Something about that opening set piece in Gravity felt so real and honest and...routine. But hurtling in constant freefall around Earth turns routine into life, and even then a storm of orbital space trash can come and turn that shitty day at work into a masterpiece of outlandish survival.

I haven't seen it in a year, but, does Gravity even let the audience have seven minutes before Sandy's Supermanning her way into oblivion? Four minutes? I know it get's right to it, not messing around even a little. I remember thinking, What? Already? Is this movie for real!?

There were some things that were kinda preposterous in Alfonso's space movie, but it is not a documentary---it is Sci-Fi, with the capital letters. It was a grownup's movie. Those scientific transgressions are easily forgiven because it otherwise is as accurate as it could be.

AND because it's so damn fun! I enjoyed the hell out of it. Easily the best movie I saw all year.

This year again we left the Pike Theater dazed and giddy, our brains full of dust and space and time-warping tidal-wave mountain walls. That was the spectacle. The thoughts, though, were deeper than the spectacle--they raced about meaning. They ignored the sentimentality and tried to appreciate the difficulties ahead.

This year it was Matt and Matt and Anne and Mike and even Topher in Interstellar. This year it's the tortured dad versus the dystopian future that needs farmers more than engineers. This year it's gravity re-purposed. This year it's not a shitty day at work, it's SAVE THE WORLD.

Interstellar is the 2001 for our generation. Right? Isn't that what we've been told over and over? Maybe it is...

It certainly aims to do things that Gravity simply wasn't interested in. Gravity spans in nearly real-time the three hours Doc Stone takes to go from tightening a bolt to being birthed from the lake in Arizona. Interstellar, on the other hand, relativity as a plot-device.

I don't want to give away too much, but Michael Caine plays "the Professor" who runs what's left of NASA in the dystopian future when food is scarce and crops world-wide are failing...

Trying to tease out the plot does an injustice--just see it if you're into the current transcendental Sci-Fi experience. Interstellar is trying to say something.

That something could be different for each person, but my takeaway was: do you see how hard any of these outlandish planet-saving missions are? In the fictional world of the movie they're nearly impossible...We need to fix this ourselves...

The science, again, is under assail from physicists and astronomers, but they do take pains to praise the intentions and most of the big-picture elements. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and Star Wars are obvious inspirations.

Again I went to see a grown-up science-fiction film in the theater and again I enjoyed the hell out of it. It reached for the stars, literally, and came back with its hands full of the dust and emptiness and sadness that you'd expect to find alone in the vastness of the interstellar void. The movie isn't really that bleak, and there is some clunky sentimentality, but Mathew McConaughey basically jumps into a gigantic black hole.

And they use relativity as a plot-device.

Christopher Nolan has made some of the most original movies of my adulthood. Memento? It took non-linearity to a creative extreme. Inception and Interstellar? Big-time, big-concept movie events.

Gravity: holy cow it's awesome.
Interstellar: holy cow it's awesome.

Nothing like a couple of Sci-Fi movies to capture my child-like wonders with the realities of space travel.

Will the World Series be Televised?

I know, certainly, that baseball's championship culminating event, the World Series will be on the airwaves and brought into the homes of whatever fans are still interested. I'm just not sure which channel.

The playoffs so far have been televised during the middle of the day on random channels that I don't get; namely TBS, the MLB channel, and Fox Sports 1. Literally, there were two games I could find on regular Fox: one saw Clayton Kershaw, the best living pitcher on Earth, get his ass handed to him by the scrappy Cardinals; and the other was, maybe Game 2 of the ALCS between the Giants and Cardinals. It was last Saturday evening.

Every single American League game was on TBS, an easy channel to get if you get basic cable. If you don't get basic cable, then, apparently, MLB is saying F-YOU. Fox Sports 1? The MLB channel? Playoffs on the MLB channel?

Now, I know my bitching falls on mostly disinterested ears: apparently enough people have basic cable, and maybe FS1 is widely available to basic cable subscribers, that baseball executives can make the statement "If you don't have cable, GFY." Most people I know feel the same way, so there's that.

This issue for me isn't about the shafting of the people too poor or too uninterested in television to pay for cable (as it has been in the past (me and my whiny bleeding heart)), the issue is about baseball, as an organization, screwing the pooch.

I love baseball. When asked which sport is my favorite, or mine in the sense of possession sports fans are prone to harbor, my answer is always baseball. That being said...

DON'T HIDE THE PLAYOFFS ON RANDOM CHANNELS I CAN'T FIND EVEN IF I HAVE CABLE. This is an important topic to me, frankly running neck and neck with the question HOW CAN WE SPEED UP THE PACE LATE IN GAMES.

I know the leisurely pace of a ballgame is one of the nostalgic-infused, Americana-soaked morsels that true fans really savor.

In a world where the NFL and our modified rugby game called "American Football" has a finite shelf-life, the slow fade of baseball from the main cultural consciousness is something that we're all painfully watching but shouldn't have to. Baseball can't help itself. I do like the one play-in game, because WHY COMPLAIN ABOUT MAKING IT MORE EXCITING? And I don't care that it's the hottest team instead of the "best" team---this new system may make it more prone for a mostly substandard team making the World Series, but so what? My Yankees lost to the red-hot group of kids with Marlins on their hats back in 2003--that's just baseball, so I know the feeling of being beat by hot pitching...

But, like the 2003 Yankees with the Marlins, the Angels and Orioles from this season had chances to beat the Royals and couldn't. So why not KC in the World Series?

It sounds like this year's playoffs have been exciting---extra innings, close games, rocking stadiums that were half-filled just a few months ago...

...just kinda wish I could watch some of it.

Anyway, and I realize that blasphemous statements are about to follow, but I think I'm rooting for the Giants. Representing Nor-Cal, baby! But I'm also not die-hard for the black-and-orange; I'd be fine with the Royals winning.

Off in the Woods Part 2

Hot. Shimmering heat lines rose off every surface. The 2014 LA Summer Heat-Wave that began in March was at full tilt in early September. Unrelenting was a cliche we'd been living with for nearly seven months.

The southwest facing wall of our apartment acted like the oven's furnace while the door to Sherweezyland faces direct sun after 10 am. No respite.

The "Sherwood Weekend" was quickly approaching. My father is from a large Irish Caitliceach family that decided after years of living crammed together they'd had enough. Big reunions happen about twice a decade. I have cherished memories from the 1990 trip; scattered perceptions from 1985; and solid if unspectacular memories of 1995 at Lake Tahoe (I had my learners permit and relished any opportunity to get behind the wheel). 

In the summer of 2000 both my brother and I attended the shindig in Bedford (in Westchester County just north of the Bronx) at the house of an auntie. I remember being shocked by both the humidity and the green---everywhere was luscious and green---and that was just waiting for a ride at LaGuardia.

Anyway, that was the last trip I made to one of the Great Sherwood Weekends.

And now, after seven months of baking at home and at Sherweezyland, fourteen years later, I'd finally be able to introduce Corrie to the majority of my father's siblings.

An hour outside of Syracuse, nestled on one of the various lakes in that area, is Camp Nazareth. To this day it remains a summer camp, and back in the sixties when they were kids, my father and his siblings would sojourn there for two weeks. They'd swim, canoe, and hike.

The canoes are still chillin' on a lake beach head:

How does the weather look in that picture? How about this next picture of my dad returning from something?

But I'm getting ahead of the narrative.

"Okay, Southland, get ready for another blast of heat. This front is bringing another push up the dial this weekend. More details after the break," the smiling, buxom, microwaved skin and scantily clad weather girl was saying as I turned off the television. The weekend was going to be more of the same, up to triple digits in the Inland Empire and upper 90s at the Beach Cities. (I understand this isn't the high-highs of blast-furnace Arizona or wherever, but for the LA area after seven months of the same?)

"Do you think we packed alright?" was a conversational topic we had even on the plane. We would see. Worries that we'd lost cold weather packing/dressing/coping skills would be tested.

We left Thursday evening, walked the tarmac at the coolest airport, and had little issues. It was September 11th. We flew the red-eye to JFK, tried sprawling out like hobos in a quiet corner to grab some more shuteye, felt...something... We didn't have something soft like cardboard to sleep on, and we didn't have, eh, what're they called? You use them to cover yourself when you're not all sweaty and wishing the fan could be more powerful but quieter...oh yeah, BLANKETS.

Waiting for our flight to Syracuse and trying to sleep on the floor in a corner of the JetBlue terminal we were cold for the first time in MONTHS.

We landed in Syracuse before 11 am, met my dad---who'd stayed the night in Syracuse instead of subjecting himself to a Denver-to-JFK red-eye---at the airport, and exited to pick up the rental car. It was the warmest it'd be for the rest of the trip, but we didn't know it at the time. I thought it was glorious. It was crisp. It was breezy. It was autumn. It was 59 degrees. I smiled and took deep gulps of air and waved my hairy arms around just in my t-shirt.

Firstly we were going to drive to Whitesboro, a satellite town to Utica and the location of a house the majority of my aunties and uncles, including my father, called "home". We were going to find that house and make the new owners feel uncomfortable. It turned out that our car wasn't alone in that sentiment on this Friday morning, and upon arriving at the house on Main St (literally), three of my dad's siblings were there, standing across the street, gabbing and staring like weirdos. We're all weirdos, so, whatever...

Corrie got to meet some more of my aunties and uncles, and one of my cousins who was there, but we didn't know we were heading direct to meet people. It was about then that I grabbed my lone "warm" garment, a fleece pullover.

On the drive to Whitesboro, aside fro getting lost a little, my dad was funny: geeking out with childhood memories. He hadn't been to this stretch of highway or cities in 40+ years, so that was cool and made a certain sense.

After the informal meet and greet, and a trip to a familial-tradition institution---a local pastry shop---we headed out for the camp site where we'd be staying, the aforementioned Camp Nazareth.

Camp Nazareth is open during the summer months, of which September is not included. One of my uncles arranged to have the place rented out just for the Sherwood Shindig, which meant we were the only people at this lakeside campground. It was a collection of summer cabins, though, that hadn't been updated really since the 1930s when is was built by a Jewish businessman, even after it was purchased by a local diocese in the 1950s and became Camp Nazareth.

So, the place was dripping with memories and perceptions, things starting conversations, conversations unlocking more memories, and on the cycle went.

But that was for my dad's generation, his siblings and cousins who came to visit.

For us, our generation (of whom came I was the oldest), it was a spooky and abandoned rickety campground without enough lights. Throw in the fact that it was rainy and cold, evidenced by my dad's attire in the picture above, and what we get is a good test of California intestinal fortitude.

After helping out in the nice-sized cafeteria's kitchen, I rode along with three other cousins to Albany to pick up a fourth. I took the opportunity because I realized I had no idea who my cousins were.

The next day, Saturday, was the only full day Corrie and I and my dad were going to get at the site. We tried to keep dry and warm, visited a ton, and eventually we hit up the canoes. Corrie and I shared one, and some cousins of mine took the row boat, the three of them fitting nicely in that vessel.

Here's a picture of my cousin Becky, an upperclassman at a Boston university, trying to prepare herself for the rigors of the weather to be encountered on the rowboat:

If she ever sees that I put this here she may end up upset. Lucky for me my readers are mainly isolated in California, Arizona, and Latvia.

After more kitchen work, and cuddling next to the fire, Corrie and I moved sleeping quarters to a warmer and more connected spot. The next day we left first, heading back to Syracuse for my dad's early flight.

We drove south on down to Ithaca to have brunch with some of Corrie's architecture pals, a married couple who moved so the fella could attend graduate school at Cornell. The lady got pregnant, had the baby (who's now sixth months old), and the fella, wanting to move back to San Diego, postponed that move by taking an architectural teaching job at Cornell. Could be worse things...

We toured Cornell's campus (SPOILER: it's really nice) after brunch, and got a feel for how cool and beautiful Ithaca is. On a related topic, I realized how little I actually want to live in a primarily college-town, That may change...

Anyway, we zoomed back to Syracuse for our own flight back to Queens, waited for a few short hours unable, for some ridiculous reason, to watch the Jets game on any television in the terminal, and eventually made it back to Long Beach.

When we landed at 9:40 the announcer on the JetBlue flight called out, "Welcome to Long Beach, where the temperature is a beautiful 89 degrees." Twenty minutes to ten pm, and it was almost 90 out.

Our apartment was just as broiled out as when we left, likely close to 100 inside.

The whirlwind nature of some of our adventures can be draining, but there's always reasons for these trips. The cousins I was seeing I was seeing for the first time in fourteen years. Fourteen years. Corrie hadn't ever met nearly everybody at the campground. Reasons are reasons, and sometimes they make sense and sometimes less so.

As we unpacked our bags we noticed that all of our clothes and our sleeping bags were just as frigid as when we'd packed them. How about that, we mused. Here we were sweating on top of being smelly and grimy from a shower-less weekend, unpacking in the oven that is our apartment during a heatwave, and we'd brought some of the Upstate cold home with us.

Here's one last picture, my dad, his brother, and one of my cousins (not the son of the pictured uncle):