EE

Silly as this alphabet blogging theme seems, I guess it will keep me posting for a while! E is the letter for my first two names: Eleanore Elizabeth. I have four Es in there, including the problematic final E of Eleanore. It's grandma's name, and she once told me that she had added that final E herself, wanting to control the way that others pronounced her name. She hated the sound of "El-uh-NER", and thought that by placing the E at the end, people must say "El-uh-NOR". Well, that assumes that everyone knows the rule about lengthening a vowel that has an E following it, which is a stretch these days. On my birth certificate, I noticed that the final E is written in different ink than the rest of my names, so I'm guessing that someone corrected it after Grandma saw it.

D is for Downey Street

From 1980 to 1989, all the following people lived at 158 Downey Street in San Francisco. This list of those who lived there and how they were "rated" at the end of the era by a group of the former housemates in 1989.

Leah - longest tenant, 1st business at home, tact queen, 1st computerized phone bill/list, 1st punk hairdo, appliance queen
Barb - fart queen, roho queen (rolling hostess), DJ queen, 1st spouse who moved in
Grant - wife queen, tipped the balance to more males than females
Tedd - teen queen, most intense, phone queen, 1st microwave owner, angry queen
Eric - faerie queen, 1st tv/vcr owner, most houseguests, 1st wall-to-wall carpet
William - string been queen, garden queen
Teresa - clean queen, most tranformed, 1st fart queen, 1st dust buster owner, 1st house stereo owner, queen of the lump sums
Doug - tallest, straight queen, 1st subletter, least funny comedian
Rhodes - least stuff in shortest amount of time, greyhound bus locker award
Gene - most stuff and phone calls in the shortest amount of time
Danalan - house dork, most names, 1st ex-lover to move in
James Bergeron - slept with most roommates and guests, sex queen, 1st to live in the basement
Charlie - art slob moderne, shrink wrap queen, 1st vacuum cleaner owner, 1st coffeemaker owner, mirror queen, burp queen, 1st art studio in house, trend queen, 1st sixth housemate, strangest shoes
Betsy - invisible, most girlfriends, 1st to paint room, best stuff
Gus - best cook, chef queen, 1st male companion, coffee queen
Michael - in and out prize, caused most girls' tears, 1st car owner, 1st separate phone line, best pot, money fret queen, shoplifter queen (tied)
Martin - best xmas present-giver, photo queen
Connie - fret queen, toast queen, tenant power queen
Hilary - migraine queen, cry queen, 1st to volunterily move out, most nerdy boyfriends
Sue Bishop - anti-stereo queen, 1st one kicked out
Nilos Nevertheless - bat, wierdest food, s&m queen
Laura Mae - space queen, most not present for someone who was here, 1st beard
David Dalechek - smoker queen, most depressed queen
Bob Amey - most things in storage
Steven Diverde
Adam

Cats:
Breeze - hump queen, size queen
Dreams - 1st cat kicked out (see Michael)
Monroe - most talkative cat
Nelson - pee queen

Special awards:
Big Man of the Record Collection - Barb
Big Man of the Handsaw - Eric
Big Man of the Toilet Bowl - Teresa
Big Man of the Front & Back Doors - Barb
Big Man of the Kitchen - Teresa
Big Man of the Fireplace - Connie
Big Man of the Basement - Charlie
Big Man of the Landlord - Connie
Big Man of the Water Filter - Leah
Big Man of the Food Bill/phone bill - Leah, formerly Teresa

Weirdest Guest nominees: Australian woman (told Connie "your nipples are hard"), Danalan, Mike Mayo, Janet (Hilary's friend who slept with James)
Best costume on a guest: Jorge, Gay Freedom Day 1983
Honorable mention - Fred Oberg (most house items donated)
Broken toilet award: unknown
Best neighbor award: Roosevelt & Nate (how you bof?), Matthew
Worst neighbor award: Bitch, Red man
Wives awards: Teresa & Leah
Best kept secret: The Secret Thing

CD

Cheating my alphabet a little bit for a combo of letters: CD. I probably own more CDs than I ever owned records, or "vinyl" as we call them now to distinguish them by material rather than purpose - a "back formation", linguistically speaking. We had plenty of 78s in the house when I was little. I remember when we got a Hi-Fi for the living room, and on that Hi-Fi we played comedy albums, Broadway show tune compilations, Bob Dylan, Bennie Goodman, the Turtles and so forth all the way up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. You could stack the 45s on there, from the Chipmunks to Elvis, and a new one dropped down when one finished.

The first album I remember spending my allowance on was Creedance Clearwater Revival. I never thought there was much point to buying albums, because you could hear it all for free on the radio. But when I loved a song, I had to figure out the lyrics, jotting them down by the radio, or spring for the record and hope the lyrics were written inside the album cover.

When the market started shifting to CD format, I was really angry. I felt cheated that I was going to have to buy my favorites all over again. But by then, I had moved a lot and the albums were starting to get ragged. Some were warped and all were scratched. The ads assured us that CDs were PERMANENT and that we'd never have to replace them. Now I am trying to find the time to strip all the music off of my collection and get it all digitized. In the meantime, my CDs are in a box under the bed! Only the very favorites have been dropped into iTunes and get played in the kitchen off of my iPod.

B is for barbershop

I don't know how it came to be that this type of music became my obsession. As a child I loved folk music and rock and roll, I enjoyed classical and jazz. I sang in the church choir and sang along with the Mamas and the Papas and the Limelighters. In high school I equally loved marching bands and Inna Gadda Da Vida, baby. Harmony is the thing that pulled my heartstrings the most. CSNY and bluegrass singers. Madrigals and Dylan with Joan Baez. Put four voices together and it's more than twice the power of two.

For the past 23 years I have spent most of my discretionary funds and a great deal of time learning how to sing this artform, how to carry the melody without carrying the quartet, how to blend in a chorus, how to perform with joy and excitement.

A letter to myself

There is a theory that if we have a theme, we shall be inspired to do more art or writing. Let's test that theory this month. The theme is LETTERS (Written letters, typography, photos of signs, who knows?) Shall we start at the beginning? With the Letter A.

A is for apple. I come from apple country - western New York, where the macintosh reigns supreme. When the leaves got colorful and the temperature started to drop, we'd go out to Frost's Orchard on the O-At-Ka Trail on a sunny crisp Saturday and pick up a few bushels. They always had the cider press working. The funky smell and texture of the apple pulp, laying on the ground like brown felt. The ice-cold intense tang of the newly squeezed cider. The skin of the apples bright red and green, the surface cold and smooth as a marble.

I remember reading on the red bed in the kitchen and eating the macs as I read, feeling rich with apples, you could eat all you wanted. I always ate the whole thing, including the core. The seeds were nutty and a little bitter, bringing the whole thing into balance. The sweet, the sour, the bitter, the apple.

Friendly patterns

What makes people become friends? I was listening to This American Life this morning, and Ira Glass was talking about friendships. I started wondering what it is that sparks friendship between people, and turned my attention to the things that were there to light a friendship flame in the past..

Selby (pre school) - she lived 3 houses down the street. That's all it took when you are babies in a small town.
Sally (grade school) - she played flute (like me), liked the Monkees (oh, all right), had several brothers and a sister (like me).
Choddy (jr high) - she wore miniskirts (despite the ban), lived in an A frame house (cool), had a big family (like me).
Roxanne (jr high) - she liked the same music I did, was loud and funny (like me).
Teresa (high school)- she was in band (like me), was part of a clique (like me), interested in mind expansion, travel and rock and roll (like me), her dad had tattoos on his chest(not like my dad).
Michael (college) - he liked Joni Mitchell (like me), was sarcastic and talkative (like me), enjoyed arguing (like me).

St Patricks Day, 1981

This is an excerpt from a diary that I kept on a trip across country in 1981. It started with a FREE airplane ride from SFO to NYC. Courier companies like DHL used to pay for people to ride in coach, as long as they didn't have any luggage and could leave at any time, and DHL would use the luggage space for their shipments.

I was on my way to meet my high school friend, Teresa (aka Terri), and we were going to drive across the USA, where she was going to join our collective household in San Francisco.

AA Boarding Pass - 16 March 1981
SFO to JFK, seat 35J Smoking: Yes
Passenger name: Courier


A call first thing Monday and I was off that evening - met the DHL man at the airport, he was late 25 minutes. Sheer disbelief, especially when my ticket materialized a $700 price for which I paid nothing - and the flight was nearly empty. I watched Pvt. Benjamin, a movie with Goldie Hawn, dozed a bit, arrived NYC at 5:30am.

Terri and I went out for breakfast, did some errands, it is COLD here. 25 degrees and windy. Then we met Denise and Ed and drove to White Plains, with the crowds of green high-schoolers took the train to NYC for the St. Patrick's day parade. Watched it start from the corner of 78th and 5th with friends of Ed, who do it every year, getting drunk and rowdy and sticking out the wind and the cold. Denise is very nice, but her relationship with Ed is very weird. When they part, even for a few minutes, there is a major scene: "Do you want me to stay? I'll stay if you want me to." "No, go - oh I love you, ya ya ya ya da". Really strange. Terri said their marriage has been rocky lately but they just made up. It's like ripping flesh to get them apart. I would suffocate, but she seems to want it or need it.

Denise, Teresa and I spent most of the afternoon in Leo's, a bar down the street, drinking Irish coffee. The parade was fun, albeit cold.. I have forgotten what winter is like. I got very tired by the time we went to dinner - but didn't crash until 11pm or so, after calling Dad and Victor. Terri has a close network of friends here and it must be really difficult for her to leave. I appreciate her difficulty in deciding to leave much more now. I hope she'll be able to build a complex of friendships in San Francisco, too. We're planning to leave on Monday after we do some last minute things to close up this apartment, and we're planning to go into NY to do some things. I'm eager to get moving, and it's hard for me to be patient and let it flow. There is going to be a week in Brockport, too, which seems too much. I'm going to have to get into a rhythm that suits this part of the trip - move a little, stay and enjoy, then move again.

Ticket stub:
March 18 1981
The Left Bank Presents
Doug and the Slugs
20 E 1st St.
Mt. Vernon, NY
Wed. 10PM
$4.00

Cherry blossoms

This photo was taken in 1979, when I lived in Hamamatsu, Japan for a few years. Yo-chan took me to this town to sightsee - there was a castle and lots of cherry blossoms. Mostly we were looking at each other, I guess - look how young I was, and he was young, too, though much older than I. We met in a class - I was teaching conversational English to a bunch of men who worked for Yamaha & Suzuki Motor companies. They would take me out to drink beer and eat sushi, after class.

I also remember that the shirt I was wearing was sent to me by my mom, who had to send clothes to me, as I couldn't find my size in Japan. It was pure polyster, but at least it fit. I also liked it because it was slightly boyish. Before I left for Japan, I already knew I was a lesbian, although I had promised my parents I would try to change. Yo-chan was my attempt, and a pretty good one it was.

House of Memories

This lovely house, located in LeRoy, N.Y., the "home of JELL-O", is for sale. It is described as

Single Family Property
Area: LEROY VILLAGE
County: GENESEE
Year Built: 1850
4 total bedroom(s)
4 total bath(s)
2 total full bath(s)
2 total half bath(s)
9 total rooms
Approximately 3424 sq. ft.
Type: Historic
Dining room, Kitchen, Den
Hardwood floors
2 fireplaces
Fireplace features: Artificial, Wood burning
2 car garage
Heating features: Gas, Hot water, Steam
Interior features: 1st floor laundry, Attic insulation, Basement insulation, Ceiling fan, Ceramic floors, Circuit breakers, Copper plumbing, Den/Study, Dishwasher, Disposal, Dryer, Eat-In kitchen, Formal dining room, Foyer/Entry hall, Full basement, Gas oven, Gas water heater, Library, Master bath, Microwave, Pantry, Refrigerator, Resilient floors, Walkout basement, Wall insulation, Wall to wall carpet, Washer, Window blinds, Workshop, 4 bedroom(s) on 2nd floor, Full attic
Exterior features: Barn/Out building, Blacktop driveway, Cable avail, Detached garage, Open porch, Partially fenced yard, Public connected water, Sewer connected
Approximate lot is 133x180
Approximately 0.55 acre(s)
Lot size is between 1/2 and 1 acre


I happen to know a few things about it, that, strangely, are not mentioned in the realtor's listing. The "garage", for one thing, is really a barn or a carriage house. It has a lovely upstairs "bonus room", which you have to access via a ladder, with a very old wooden plank floor. This attic is a great place to hide out, contemplate the leaves of the nearby chestnut tree, smoke cigarettes, play basketball and fling oneself out onto the gravel driveway because the hoop is located right above the open loft door. There are some old peach trees in the backyard that never produce any fruit but have lovely sticky gum that oozes out of the bark in the spring and can be chewed like juicy fruit, but watch out for the ants. There is a room in the basement of the house that once was a hiding place for runaway slaves. Push away the spider webs in the room under the living room. The stone walls down there show the traces of a wall that used to be there, protecting them from prying eyes. They could probably live off of the jars of preserves kept down there.

There is also a secret room under the steeple, accessible from a little panel in the wall of the attic (a good place to hide marbles and other valuables). Be careful in that room, because you could fall through the unfinshed floor and put your foot right through the ceiling in the upstairs hallway. There are beautiful glass doors that divide the dining room from the entrance hall. If your brother is chasing you around the house, be sure not to let him slam that glass door closed just before you round the corner, or you could end up with a scar on your forehead for life.

Be sure to look in the den for old copies of National Geographics, which show scenes and peoples from all around the world. They are sure to inspire you to travel and learn other languages. The fireplace in the den is also prone to having birds' nests in it - be sure to look up the flue before lighting any fires in there. That's the chimney that Santa uses, too, so keep it clean in December.

The best feature in the house is the lead-pipe communication system that connects the kitchen to the master bedroom. Blow really hard on the mouthpiece of the pipe in the master closet. It will whistle in the kitchen. Once the person in the kitchen whistles back, you lift the mouthpiece and yell into the pipe, which transmits your message immediately to the ear of the listener in the kitchen. This is useful for trading insults or making threats that might be punishable if said in front of your parents.

Be sure to always refer to this house as the "Brooks house", instead of the "Stevenson house". We lived there from 1956 to 1968, and deserve to be memorialized in this fashion. Please take care of the forsythia bushes. If you crawl underneath them and dig, you might find lots of hidden treasure buried in cigar boxes.

Fellow clique member makes good

This week there was a flurry of emails among my old friends from high school. We had a very tight group, lo those many years ago (35 years? could it be?), and some of us still have each other's email addresses. Pete Pitchford, who as far as I knew, disappeared off the face of the earth around 1977, suddenly emailed everyone with an update on Chris Mouganis. He is in an indy-produced movie (still in post-production, according to imdb.com) called "Final Reckoning". Chris liked acting and film - he was in the drama club with the rest of us weirdos. According to some updates over the years, and google, he lives in South Carolina and has been acting in a Columbia theater. Another photo of Chris is here.

The other oddity of the week is that Russ Fox, who I blogged about last week, or someone claiming to be him, has commented on this page. That makes two appearances from out of the blue in one week. If he'd like to email me directly, I would be glad to put him in touch with all of these other emailers - Duane, Teresa, Jack, Pete, Donna D, Dave Boyd, etc.

One activity that tied us together when we were in high school was the "Animal Game". To seem rebellious and 'out there', we would sit on the floor or the ground in public and begin to play this silent 'simon-says' like game, with gestures that indicated certain animals. I would gesture like a monkey and then quickly follow with another gesture, like an elephant, say. The person identifying as the elephant would respond with their gesture and then another one, say the lion. These gestures would pass around the circle with increasing speed until we broke down into laughter.

We were the "freaks" or hippies in our school, strongly divided from the jocks. We were also mostly the smart ones, which I think kept us from getting into too much trouble.

Russell Fox

I had a boyfriend in high school named Russ Fox. He was a tall guy with red hair who had an intense desire to read my diary. He drove a van, which made him very popular and useful as a friend. We used to pile the whole clique in there and drive around for hours. I remember that he got in an accident once and it really messed up his knee, because that van did not have much between the driver and the next car.

We broke up when he became a jesus freak. He got very involved in the pentacostal church. I saw him last when I was in college, and he had fallen in love with some woman in the church. They were engaged because he felt that god had told him they were meant for each other. God had then told her that she was NOT meant to be with him, and she split. He was extremely upset about this, naturally, and was questioning his faith.

I wonder what happened to him after that...his birthday was in February, the 7th, I think. People often come to my mind in connection with dates.