The colors of tree leaves in the fall can take away my breath. I am stunned with the brilliance and brevity.



A hike in Mill Valley before the thanksgiving feast.



I've known Ariana since she was six months old. Sometimes it seems like a long time, and sometimes like a flash. She is extremely intelligent and emotionally strong.



Is it a rock pile or an energy vortex? In Marin, it's usually both.



It's not a holiday unless chopsticks has been played on the piano. This is Aidan's first attempt.



Dessert is the best part of the meal. And whipped cream is the best part of dessert, apparently...



Debra & Nissim's brand new Scion. John, who is shopping for a car, commented that you have to have a goatee to drive a Scion - and Nissim fits the bill!

This time of year, it seems appropriate to make a little list of foods that I love.

• Pie. Especially the fruity ones. Pumpkin pie is great, but it is better with a home-baked crust. I believe if I had nothing better to do, I could be the president of the Pie Booster Club, the people who promote pie-eating around the world. If I could be a taster.
  
• Coffee with chocolate soy milk in it. and a little sugar. Is that food? I guess the soy makes it so.
• Popcorn. Air-popped, not microwaved, so that I can just put a little salt and butter on it, not too much. I remember the first popcorn popper I ever owned. It looked like a big electric wok, with a yellow plastic dome on top that doubled as a bowl. It was my most prized possession during my freshman year of college. In my last year of college, when I had my own apartment with a kitchen, but no idea of how to cook anything, I went through a phase of eating only popcorn and broccoli. I seem to remember making a broccoli casserole with popcorn on top (pre-popped), and it got very soggy.
• Soup, but not ones that are tomoto-based. Once I wouldn't eat tomato soup at lunch and mom made me eat it later, again and again, until I finished it. Cold. That trauma keeps me from enjoying tomato soup or any reddish soup. But just to show you that I may have invented that traumatic memory, I do like cold (tomato) gazpacho!
  
• I like to pick turkey off the carcass and eat it warm. Sliced and on my plate is not nearly as good. With cranberries that I grind up with oranges and a little sugar.
  
• Did I mention pie?

As I read the entries from my old diaries, I marvel that the memories that have persisted from those days are NOT the things I wrote about. Did I censor myself because of real or imagined future readers? Was I incapable of writing about my emotions? Maye what was happening was the "stuff" of a diary, and what I was feeling was something best kept quiet or to myself?

Or perhaps the emotions developed over time, as the memory was written and re-written in my mind, until those emotions melded with the memory and are today indistinguishable?

In the following entries, I can read through the lines and see two events that I remembered in my earlier blog - the day that Cathy yelled obscenities at Italian men, and the grapefruit shoplifting. Notice at the end of the day I decide she is "unstable". Of course it doesn't stop me from liking her and thinking we are alike somehow. But stranger to me than that is that I don't mention the true details of what happened, and yet I remember those events so clearly.

-----------
June 30, 1971
We took buses to downtown Milan - through miles of "suburbs" - farms interspersed with factories and houses and some villas. The whole area was very country-ish - like would we never get to the city?? Milan itself is very modern, with many office skyscrapers. The strangest thing was that all of the houses, stores and buildings looked like they were unoccupied - there were blinds and shutters on all the windows, even thought it was about 80 in the shade and a beautiful day.

Our hotel is the Hotel Argentina - a real old place out of a movie. The street - Via F. Filzi, is bordered with trees and tiny cars. It's filled with crazy drivers with loud horns. The hotels and apartments on this street all have long balconies on the street, where Italian women lean over an dwatch the men sit at the cafes below. Our room (Happy, Cathy and mine) is small with a big wardrobe, sink, chairs, table, two beds, and a cot. It’s really nice but it really looks foreign. The wallpaper has grape vines on it. We had a great dinner on a back terrace in the hotel. It's a big patio with a roof of grape arbor, with wine bottles hanging all over. Our group got a big table and sat together. We had 1) a big plate of pasta - noodles, sauce and spice, 2) big plate of roast beef slices and vegetables in oil - really was good, 3) a plate of fruit - plum, peach, apricot each and 4) a bottle of vino rose out of a coke machine for each of us. It only costs 20 cents a bottle - and Coke is about 60 cents. That was dinner, and we practiced European manners, like never put your hands in your lap while eating, and use your left hand, and don’t gulp the wine.

After supper, Cathy and I walked all over Milan. We got fruit at a store that had every kind of fruit and vegetable you ever saw. We got three grapefruit, three oranges and a three quart basket of sweet red cherries, all for about $2.80, or 1850 lire (the exchange rate is .65 - that means that 65 lire is 10 cents, I learned at dinner). Cathy and I also explored the HUGE train station and decided that the reason Italian men are so pushy is because Italian society had made them that way - not that their actual beliefs or attitudes are different. Met a few Americans at the train station: two girls going to Florence who had been in Bern, and a guy from Texas who is living in Milan for a year, with his family. Tomorrow we take a tram at 11am and travel four hours to Lausanne.

July 1st, 1971
The Alps are fantastic! After a walk through Milan early in the morning, we took a bus to the train station and lugged that heavy luggage all over the place. The ride was fantastic - first Italian villas and vineyards, then through the Alps. I have never seen anything like the scenery here. Now we are at a camp (Le Vennes) outside Lausanne - it's a bible school, usually. We’re in dorms - it’s really nice - you can see the lake from here. We had a group meeting about our schedule and stuff and after dinner we all went downtown (not Lausanne but La Sallaz, a suburb. Cathy and I took a long walk and also stopped at a café for café au lait. We spoke only French and did better than we expected. The trees here are neat - they are pines that have trunks like oaks and also prehistoric looking trees.

July 2nd, 1971
We spoke to a woman this morning that helped to choose the families and she told us some stuff about them and what they did. My "father" is a medical supplies distributor. We spoke en francais. After lunch M. Loup, the group representative and his family were here - we spoke to them of the region and our families. We are all terribly excited and can't wait.

Before dinner, we took a walk to the Vivarium, which is a big park with huge trees and a zoo and a pond. It was tres belle. At a chalet restaurant that we stopped at, you could see the French Alps and Lake Leman. The Loups are very nice people. Mirjana will be staying with them. Tonight, I stayed in the dorms - we talked about lots of stuff, and I finished a letter to Mom and Dad. Then, when we went to bed, Cathy and I talked for a couple of hours, about everything. She is really an interesting person, and although she seems to be unstable, she has her head together on a lot of things and what I like is that she isn’t friendly to me just to have someone to impress - she really wants to know me and to let me know her. We are very similar in many ways - our heads are close together. I hope that we become better friends as the summer goes on.

Our quartet is having so much fun together. We were up in Red Bluff last weekend for a new chorus' (California HEAT) charter party. We got to dress up, sing a lot, get coached, and eat together, and sing some more. I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend.

Ever since I posted the other day about Cathy Sheldon, I have been trying to pull up other memories of that trip. For some reason, I can't find the photo album from that summer, but I did find my trip diary. I have diaries that I wrote in nearly every day from 5th grade through college. I'm not sure why I was compelled to chronicle in that way; perhaps I was preparing for blogging. I started reading the diary last night, and decided to transcribe parts of it for the blog.

What's interesting is how the narrative captures physical details, without going into the emotions of the experience at all. Perhaps that's the way I am, or perhaps it is the process of a 16 year old. The funniest part of the story is how I explain to the "reader" my experience of airports and flying - because, of course, it was my first time traveling any great distance. I didn't know how mundane and commonplace these things would become - even to me. I liked the food served in the little compartments and explained how we sat in groups of three "chairs". I even counted the rows of seats!

-----------------------------
June, 1971

A totally unbelievable experience so far - at 6am Mom, Dad & I left for Springfield and we arrived about 1pm. There's about 70 kids here at the hotel for a meeting - pre-departure for Switzerland. It didn't last very long and we had from 3pm to 9:30pm with nothing to do because the plane was delayed four hours and wouldn't leave til midnight. Somehow we spent the time - walking around Springfield and talking with others. A lot of the kids here were from New York and couldn't go to the language camp because of Regents. We took two buses to the airport in Hartford, Bradley Field, and since for this entire time I had not had a group or a leader because I'm the only one in my group that went to Springfield, I had to find mine. Well, first we weighed in and got our tickets. Then I found my leader - Mirjana - she's really nice. She introduced me to various members of the group who tried to realize my name wasn't Eleanore as they had all planned upon.

Then, we waited, and waited, and waited. The plane, because it was chartered, was getting more and more delayed as it went on. So when we all finally got in line with 250 others, it was 2am, and liftoff was 2:30am. It was raining, but very cool. I have a fair seat - it's a window seat but it happens to fall between windows. There are 45 rows of three on each side of the plane. After about an hour, maybe two, we saw the sun rise - it was really beautiful. Just like this huge rainbow set on its side. Then, as we moved into heavier clouds, it swallowed up the sunrise and the effect was that we had gone over the edge. Very far out. About 4am - I still hadn't gone to sleep - we ate dinner. It was good, steak and potatoes and peas in all those neat containers.

I'm afraid my writing isn't too good right now because now it's 7:30am and I just woke up from about a three hour sleep. As you look out the window, all you can see is funny patterns of blue and white fluffy stuff, real far below you and occasionally you can see the sea - blue with tiny white dots in it. The captain just made us fasten our seat belts - due to some slight turbulence. I hadn't noticed much, maybe that's why I can't write. We land in two hours and right now we're being served a "continental" breakfast. I'm not sure but I think it's coffee, orange juice and rolls (I haven't been served yet).

I'm sitting in a threesome set of chairs with Mike and Cathy. Mike is from Indiana and likes photography and computers and Cathy is a vegetarian. Well, the breakfast was a cold roll, orange-grapefruit juice and milk or coffee. Ugh. Our plane left the American continent over Nova Scotia, they said, and we took sort of a loop up and back down over England. We have been cruising at 31,200 feet. The clouds are too much, it's impossible to explain. You can say they look sort of like cotton, or whipped cream, or foam, but they really don't look like anything. One time - at sunrise - we saw this cloud that was a thunderhead and we went over it. The clouds were all flat and low below us, then all of a sudden this huge ridge looms in front of us, going straight up.

We're turning, we think maybe we're coming near Europe. It's too cloudy to tell what we're going over, but I'm sure it's still land. After this we came to the shore - amidst the clouds you could see patches of divided land and tiny, tiny houses and towns. We flew over the English Channel and over France, which looked about the same except more rivers. Then all of a sudden we saw this huge lake with green hills all around it and the pilot said, "There's Lake Geneva." and then the Alps - it was fantastic. These huge gray and white peaks looming just below us - with glaciers between them and tiny mountain huts and little villages. Too quickly, we left that scenery and went over Italy - seemed to be a flat, wooded area with straight roads (very few, though) and orange roofed houses. A whole town appeared as an orange spot until we got closer. And then, we circled for a long time to Milan. The airport we landed in was modern and clean and efficient - except I had to wait a long time for my luggage, since I was early getting it on.

All the world says,
"I am important;
I am separate from all the world.
I am important because I am separate,
Were I the same, I could never be important."

Yet here are three treasures
That I cherish and commend to you:
The first is compassion,
By which one finds courage.
The second is restraint,
By which one finds strength.
And the third is unimportance,
By which one finds influence.

Those who are fearless, but without compassion,
Powerful, but without restraint,
Or influential, yet important,
Cannot endure.

-- Tao Te Ching, Lao Tse
(from a post on Austin City Limits)

During this season of politics, I have been thinking a lot about what I believe, and about the experiences in my life that helped formed my basic belief system. If I have to sum up my world view in a phrase, it would be "we are all one global family". Early on in my life, I was exposed to foreign students in my home and my community. I learned first-hand that language and cultural differences were just window-dressing - in fact, we are all the same underneath. We all love, laugh, cry and share the same set of emotions, no matter where we are from. We have more in common than not. From as early as I can remember, my desire was to travel, to re-affirm this belief, to spread the news.

I went on to learn languages and to travel a great deal. My experiences abroad and at home only confirmed and strengthened my belief. I grew to have a great deal of respect for diplomats and for arbitrators. Their job is so delicate and immense, because despite the truth of our similarities, we humans insist upon ferreting out the differences between us. Diplomacy and tact are two virtues that I most value in others. I believe that the best work that can be done involves bringing two warring parties to a truce. I love reading about treaty and alliance building.

My dislike of the Bush administration mainly stems from their obvious disregard for diplomacy. The dismissal of nuclear and environmental treaties, the dismissive attitude towards the United Nations representatives, the pre-emptive strike in Iraq.. all of these things, and more, are in direct conflict with what I hold dear.

I'd like to ask Google image search people this one question..

When you enter "Leah Brooks" in the image search engine, and go, why does Henry C. Hythecker come up as the first choice? And thank goodness I don't look like him.

This morning, a memory floated up from a long time ago, one that I had not thought about for many, many years. I went to Switzerland on an summer exchange program when I was 15 or 16 years old. The program I was a part of was called "The Experiment in International Living", and was operated out of Brattleboro, Vermont. We were a group of about 25 kids. The program offered a week or two of pre-travel orientation, with language study, in Vermont, and then we were off to Europe. I didn't go to the orientation program, but rather joined the group at JFK in New York City. Therefore, I never really felt a strong part of that group, because I was the 'new kid'. Also, they were, for the most part, rich kids from New York suburbs or New England, who had travelled before and seemed to know the words to every single Broadway song - not from having sung it around the piano, like I did, but from attending shows on Broadway. I felt like a hick from the farm who was very unsophisticated and scared to even go on a plane.

However, I did make some friends in the group. One of them was Cathy Sheldon. She was beautiful, with dark, curly hair and very bright red lips and shiny eyes. I think her dad was a doctor in Massachusetts. She loved to eat grapefruit, and never went anywhere without some in her bag. She would peel them and eat the segments with great relish. On our way to Switzerland, we stopped over in Milan. We had the day free to explore the city. Cathy took me away from the group and we roamed the city together. She was so confident and had lots of travel tips: if you get lost, just go to the river and you'll probably be in the middle of town. Or climb up a hill and go to the highest steeple or belltower to get an overview. We did just that, because we got lost and found again many times that day. She was a "bad" girl, because she liked to shoplift. She always got away with it. She would be oh so very charming in the shop, talking in broken Italian, and slip some grapefruit into her bag. She had plenty of money, so I think it was for the fun of it. Men in Italy would call out to us, cute teenagers from America, and she would shout out obscenities to them. Her bravado was immense.

I'm not sure why she picked me to be friends with.. perhaps the others had rejected her during the orientation week. We never kept in touch after that summer. I still carry just a little bit of Cathy Sheldon in me, every time I travel. I still love to climb those belltowers.

A memory of the Hmong refugees that we knew in the 80s: Their English was sketchy at best, and we all had to struggle to communicate. Once, someone asked them about their relatives, and where they had ended up after the exodus of their people. They shook their heads sadly and pointed up, and said, "po-land". We figured this meant that the family had died and gone to heaven. Much later, it was revealed that the extended family was living in Portland! And that is where they ended up moving, as well.

We went to Po-land this last weekend, not to visit the family but to shop for a duplex. It was actually a lot of fun, madly driving around neighborhoods with our realtor and "doing the math". We also ate Peruvian tapas, visited Powells, and had breakfast at the Bijou Cafe (best breakfast 'in the world', according to the reviews on the wall).

Up there, fall colors were ablaze, and in nearly every neighborhood, the Kerry yard signs were still loud and proud.

Forcing myself to continue to be optimistic, I grab at this:

Never before has my minority been quite so large. About half of the country feels as I do, that GWB should not be in office.

A week spent at a convention is like travelling in another dimension, our own personal twilight zone, for a while. We arrived at the airport in the dark early morning, and, unlike the ordinary world, we begin to recognize friends in the waiting room. Familiar faces surround us on the plane and in the terminal. This phenomenon grows - at the hotel, we are greeted by friends and our chorus members. We are stayed in Indianapolis at a hotel some of us had stayed in before, in 1993, so the place is somewhat familiar, if slightly blurry with time-worn memories. The streets are laid out in the same pattern, but the storefronts and businesses are new and changed from how we recall.

Every day, the routine is unlike our normal lives - we sing and rehearse, listen to music, eat at new restaurants, meet friends old and new. I turn the corner and run into someone from Hawaii that I know from years ago. Our quartet gets to spend so much quality time together - this is a gift that up until this week, we had not received.

My brother and family come for an evening from Ohio. This is certainly surreal, and so generous and loving. The competition goes on and on, each performance more breathtaking than the last. Our chorus enters this dream time, dressing by dawn's light and applying stage makeup, warming up to sing early in the day, and jumping on to the semi-finals with full confidence and joy. We are rewarded with 11th place. To me, this is another gift, an opportunity to perform on the finals stage. Others are disappointed that we did not make our goal of top 10, but only 6 points separated us from that goal. I can't feel the disappointment, only the thrill.

The exhaustion of being out of time begins to build. The martinis and the delicious food of Indianapolis (who would have guessed that there would be so many good meals?) begin to dull our senses - or more likely, we are tired out with the emotional overload of having our hearts touched and pulled again and again by the harmonies and lyrics of barbershop songs.

Another fantastic time on the stage, and another full day of incredible performances by choruses whose sound, generated way in the front of that large large room, pushes against my sternum (in the back of the hall) and brings tears to my eyes many times.

Highlights of our twilight zone:
L'Attitude rehearsals, dinners and making new friends
Harborlites singing "Something's Comin"
Singing in the lobby bar with Mission Valley friends
Scott's face at our rehearsal
Having our meal in the wine cellar of St Elmo's Steak house
Singing with Razzcals (our friends, and #2 in the world) at our party

At the airport check in, I glanced at the passenger list on the terminal, and the name list looks like our chorus roster. It's like one last dream moment as I sit up in my seat on the plane and look back down the aisle, and see so many faces that I know smiling back. They have been there with me, and we will hold the moments in our hearts.