The Trashman Stoppeth

The Ancient One, as many know, does much of his reading on his morning walks through the neighborhood. Only on rare occasions does it pose a physical threat, usually the result of walking into a parked car while engrossed in a compelling scene of a murder mystery. Now and then other walkers or neighbors wake him from his reverie with comments or questions about the reading material.

Having been noticed regularly by others as he passed along the way, he wasn't really prepared the other morning when the trash truck stopped to pick up the greenwaste as I was leaving for work. After emptying the barrels, the driver turned and came up the driveway. With a big smile and a heavy accent, he said that he often noticed my reading habit as I walked along the street. He asked what types of books I read and I gave him my standard answer about mystery novels and thrillers. Then he surprised me.

"Reading is good," he said. With a wonderful, wide smile on his face, he continued, "I always have a book with me on the truck and I always read during my lunch hour and breaks. I learn so much from reading." I must confess that he proved to me once again how much people in all walks of life want to learn and that books provide an excellent vehicle to do so. And I was delighted to know that it was the printed word on paper that helped enlighten his day.

Yes, The Ancient One agrees. Reading is good for everyone!

Enumerating. . .

It’s been a quiet writing month but The Ancient One has been busy. This week, for example, he began work for the U.S. Bureau of the Census as an “Enumerator” or should I say and “enumerator in training.” The 4 days of classroom work ended today and tomorrow is field training. If all goes well, the real enumerating begins on Monday.

At this point in the year before the decennial census, the enumerators count and confirm listings of housing units. To assist us in this process, we have been training on HHCs, which in English means Hand-Held Computers. They are marvelous little machines using cellular technology (I think) and they include GPS capabilities. We’ve been running exercises on them for 4 days and now we get to show that we know what we learned. Assignments for the blocks where I am responsible for “address canvassing” will be downloaded mysteriously to my HHC and off I will go. At least all enumerators are assigned to “crews” in the area where they live and don’t have to travel far and wide across the land.

The Ancient One has learned a lot this week. But he is very tired. It is the first time he has worked a full-time week since he retired in 2006. Yeah, there have been a couple of 12-14 hour days on TV shoots but they never add up to a week of full-time, detailed work. This may be the most tiring week because once the real job begins, it won’t be full-time and it will last only for about 12 weeks. By then, it is hoped that the nationwide army of enumerators will have every possible housing unit listed on computer-based maps to be used by the “people counters” during the actual census next year.

So, “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to enumerating I go.” That’s just one reason there have been so few posts this month! The Ancient One will offer up additional comments on this new working experience in the weeks to come. Yawnnnnnnnn. . . And now to get some sleep.

An Amazing Fiddler. . .on the Roof

The Ancient One has seen 2 performances of Fiddler on the Roof at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School this week and is scheduled to see 2 more before the production completes its run on Sunday, March 22. Why see it so many times? Well, son Seth is the Director and it is his 1^st musical direction effort and. . .

But I am a biased observer so I won't talk about the quality of the direction here. I won't mention the outstanding casting, selection of musical and vocal directors, choreographer, technical director and costumers. You see, my son the Director gives them all the credit, ignoring the fact that he selected the production team and cast. But I know better, even if I am a proud father who is just a little bit biased.

Instead, I will talk about the quality of the performances I witnessed although I am not sure where to begin. I guess, when you are talking about Fiddler you have to begin with Tevye. I have seen Jake Tieman perform before and I was a fan of his before this production. But I was still totally excited watching him perform. He was Tevye! He became the character and took charge of the stage. He is both an outstanding singer and actor and showed us both his skills and Tevye's soul. I particularly liked the twinkle is his eye when he had his conversations with God.

The rest of the cast was also outstanding. Golde (Kate Graham) looked like Tevye's wife and her singing voice complemented his very well. The singing and characterizations presented by the 3 older daughters Tzeitel (Mackenzie Gomez), Hodel (Samantha Hill) and Chava (Katie Segal) were outstanding and you just knew that they were sisters. Zach Barryte (Motel the Tailor) is a wonderful comic actor and provided a delightfully nuanced characterization of the bumbling young tailor. (I talked about Zach's comedy last December in my post on The Face on the Barroom Floor.) And then there was Koray Tarhan (Fyedka), the young Russian displaying both wonderful singing and dancing in the tavern. Finally, the choreography inThe Dream was brilliant, the best I have seen in any production of Fiddler, and the entire scene was made even better by Grandma Tzeitel (Dorothy Hayden) and Fruma Sarah (Christina Leslie).

I don't think I have ever singled out for plaudits so many actors in a single production. And then The Ancient One reminds himself that this was a cast of high school students. And while I have mentioned 8 performers by name, I personally want to congratulate the entire cast/ensemble for providing us with a wonderful performance. (If you click on the list below, you will get a more readable view.)

This production of Fiddler has 4 more performances, Thursday, March 19 through Sunday, March 22. There may be a few tickets left. If you are in the area, check at www.penhighdrama.com to select seats and buy tickets.

L'Chaim!!!!! And, again, CONGRATULATIONS to the cast, crew, director and entire production team!!!

2 Years and 400 posts

I just realized that I flew past 2 milestones over the past 2 weeks. February 26 was the 2nd blogiversary for The Ancient One and the 400 post mark has been achieved. In a way it is all very surprising. While my writing pace has slowed down, the cantankerous old curmudgeon is still here although not quite as curmudgeonly as he expected to be.

Thank you to all who have passed this way, especially those who return on a regular basis.

Brenda Arrieta Killian (1977-2009)

I was scanning my home page on Facebook Friday night when a message popped up on the screen. It was from a young woman who had been stage manager for a play I did several years ago at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). She asked, "Have you heard about Brenda." When I answered "No," she told me, as gently as possible, that Brenda had died of cancer that morning.

I first met Brenda at CSUDH when we were both cast in the play Boy by Diana Son. I was Papa Uber Alles and she was one of my daughters. Brenda was a wonderful actress and a better person. It seemed she always had a big unforgettable smile on her face. After she graduated in 2001, she went off to England where she obtained a Master's degree. When she returned, I first saw her when she walked into the lobby at Palos Verdes Players one night when I was working the box office. She was there to review the play for a local newspaper. We talked for a while, reminiscing about her trip to England, our time on stage together and a friend of mine at PV Players who had been her high school drama teacher.

The next time I saw Brenda was the fall of 2007 when I was cast at CSUDH in a new play, The Little College on a Hill which she had co-written for the Dominguez Bridge Theatre Company (DBTC). There was that huge smile and a warm hug for Papa from one of his many stage daughters. After the play closed, I saw Brenda one last time the late winter (or early spring) of 2008 when she told us at a DBTC meeting that her family was moving to Oregon. After that my only contact with her was when we became "friends" on Facebook and exchanged a note or two.

Brenda was too young and too bright to be taken from our midst. Her 2 young children lost their wonderful mother much too soon. There are a lot of us who have been struggling through this weekend trying to cope with this tragic, enormous loss. A full obituary written by Don Colburn of The Oregonian can be found here. It included this picture taken by Stephanie Yao Long of The Oregonian.

Look at that smile!! I'll never forget it or the young woman behind it! RIP Brenda. . . .

Inky Finger Tips and Old Memories

A little over a month ago, I applied for a temporary job with the Census Bureau and took the qualifying exam. About 10 days ago I received a call offering me a position as an enumerator which I accepted. That means I'm a counter of some sort working in the field, possibly interviewing families although I think that part of the job won't come until next year which is the official U.S. decennial census year. This year involves all the preparation for the census itself.

My training was scheduled and rescheduled. I asked a few questions and know that my work will be in the area where I live and the job is part-time for 12 weeks. I figure that the income will finance a couple of east coast trips we have scheduled this year. So, what does all of this have to do with inky finger tips and old memories?

Before I can start training, I had to go in for fingerprinting and the filling out of forms. My appointment was yesterday (Friday) afternoon. The line was appropriately long but moved right along. The pleasant lady who took my prints was very talkative and had a lot of questions as she was rolling my fingers one-by-one on the ink pad and applying them to the cards on which the prints were recorded.

She asked me when was the last time I had been fingerprinted. I thought for a moment and told her the only time I could remember was when I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in March of 1956. She then asked me about that service; how long, where and that kind of stuff. That's where most of the memory kicked in.

I was 18 when I enlisted for 6 years in the Marine Air Reserve. I was assigned to VMA-222, a fighter squadron at Grosse Isle Naval Air Station down river from Detroit. After testing, I was given an MOS of 6600 which classified me as an air radio technician. The squadron flew AD-4 sky raiders, a prop driven plane that served yeoman duty in the Korean War. (In fact, one of my brothers and a cousin had served in the same squadron in Korea.)

Yes, The Ancient One was a weekend warrior in his youth. I had enlisted under the Reserve Forces Act of 1955 which required that at some point during my 6 years of service, I was to do 180 days of active duty training. The rest of the service would be in the form of one weekend a month and 2 weeks during the summers. But there was a loophole in the law; it did not say when that active duty was to take place and the squadron leaders seemed to be oblivious to the fact that I had not gone to boot camp or been designated for my active duty training. (The loophole was closed in late 1956 or possibly 1957 when the Act was amended to state that new recruits were to be assigned specific dates for their active duty at the time of enlistment.)

In my case, the fact that I had not been called up for my 180 days of training wasn't discovered until the fall of 1961. I had moved to Chapel Hill, NC to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina. To complete the final 6 months of my enlistment, I was assigned to a squadron based at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, VA. That was when it was discovered that I had not done my 180 days but since I had less than that amount of time left in my enlistment, the Commanding Officer decided that it made no sense to send me to boot camp at the end of my term of service.

Yes, I was among a small cadre of Marines who volunteered to be available if my country needed me but never went to boot camp or received any combat training. I did get pretty good at removing and installing the radio gear in the AD-4's and that's what I did on my service weekends and summer training for 6 years. These are the memories evoked by my inky fingertips yesterday afternoon.

One last memory of that time. One morning, as I was getting ready to leave for my weekend training, my father (the original cantankerous old curmudgeon) saw me as I came down the stairs in my uniform. He looked up with a mischievous grin on his face and commented: "This is protecting me?" Dad's been gone over 44 years now and I still miss his sense of humor. At least I think he was kidding.

Peacock Colors on Display

It happened Sunday morning while I was out walking. I came upon a peacock and several peahens. I do believe he was trying to impress the ladies as he displayed his colors in full.

When the peahens in attendance did not seem overly impressed, he offered them a different view.

You can see by their reactions how much the "turning tail" helped his cause. I think I was more impressed by his display, both front and back, than the young ladies were.

Enjoy!

My Draft Card. . .

I was cleaning out my wallet the other day and I came across my Draft Card. Actually, its formal name is my "Selective Service System Registration Certificate." It looks like this (front and back):

What is this, my children might ask. When I was young, all males were required by law to register with their local "draft board" within 10 days of their 18^th birthday. The front of the card indicates that I complied, having registered on January 27, 1956 (the 56 disappeared over the years as the card became a bit frayed); it was the day after my birthday and (as noted in a post last month) my graduation from high school. You can see the selective service number assigned to me and my address. (This was a time before zip codes and the local postal zone was entered after the city name.) There was no draft at the time but registration was designed to help the government find eligible young men if it should ever be reinstated. With the exception of a few volunteers, women were not in the armed services in those days and there was never any intent to include them in a draft if it became necessary to conscript citizens into the armed forces.

On the back of the card you can find my vital statistics at that time and the fact that I was registered with "Michigan Local Board No. 97." I really can't recall when the requirement to register ended. But apparently I took the bottom admonition seriously. I have carried my draft card with me ever since that day over 53 years ago although I'm not sure exactly when I stopped providing the Board with my changes in address.

Times certainly have changed. Now we rely entirely on volunteers to fill the ranks of the military. I must confess that I was never completely comfortable with the idea of a volunteer, or professional army. For some reason, I felt there was less chance of the military becoming a political force in this country if it was filled with conscripts counting the days until their discharge back to civilian life. I guess my fears were a bit misguided. But I do feel badly for those who stayed in the reserves or joined the National Guard after their tour of active duty only to be recalled to service in a time of need, separated from their families and sent into combat.

But I'm a dreamer. I somehow still think it is possible to achieve the kind of peace that does not require combat ready militias ready to go into battle at a moments notice. Donna does refer to The Ancient One as a Pollyanna.

Stacked Books

It's been over 3 months since I last wrote about the books I had read. But that doesn't mean I stopped reading; the below pictured stack covers all that was read, mostly on my daily walks.

The list:

• Jeffrey Archer, A Prisoner of Birth

• J.A. Jance, Hand of Evil

• Douglas Preston, Blasphemy
  

• Linda Fairstein, Likely to Die

• Jonathan Kellerman, Billy Straight
  

• Clive Cussler, The Chase

• Faye Kellerman, Grievous Sins

• John Lescroart, Betrayal

• Linda Fairstein. Killer Heat
  

• Raymond Khoury, The Last Templar

• Barbara Delinsky, Accidental Woman
  

• Michael Palmer, The First Patient

• Sue Grafton, T is for Trespass

It's clear that most fall within the mystery category, some with an historical perspective and a couple also containing the elements of thrillers. It would take too much space to discuss all of them but I do want to focus on two in particular.

A Prisoner of Birth was the first Jeffrey Archer novel I have read and I will be seeking out more of his work. Set in England, the intricacies of the plot coupled with a wonderful mastery of language and story telling kept me on the edge of my seat, so to speak, all the way through. I hope that future encounters with his work will prove as pleasing.

In the case of Sue Grafton, I have read all of her "letter" mysteries although I don't generally find them to offer much more than the story at hand. However, in the case of T is for Trespass, one of the plot lines dealt with the criminal aspects of elder abuse and I found it to be extremely informative in that it placed the issue in the context of a "real" victim and the modus operandi of a "real" abuser. For me, it made human the types of things we all too often come across in newspapers where the stories are reported but not in enough detail to make clear the extent to which elder abuse robs senior citizens with limited capabilities of their dignity and, in many cases, what little they have in the way of possessions. I recommend this mystery to anyone who wants a clear picture of the horrors of elder abuse.

My reading continues. There are just so many more exciting, well written mysteries novels and thrillers out there. It is almost reassuring to know that I will never come close to reading them all. There will always be new crimes to solve and heroes to solve them.

Happy Valentines Day - Banners 17

A happy and romantic Valentines Day to all who stop this way.

May the love that this day represents translate into peace and harmony for everyone around the world. Enjoy!