A bunch of good stuff from Satchel Paige........

"Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter."
"I ain't ever had a job, I just always played baseball."
"I don't generally like running. I believe in training by rising gently up and down from the bench."
"I never rush myself. See, they can't start the game without me."
"I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup. I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what he's got to do."
"If a man can beat you, walk him."
"It's funny what a few no-hitters do for a body."
"My feet ain't got nothing to do with my nickname, but when folks get it in their heads that a feller's got big feet, soon the feet start looking big."
"One time I snuck a ball on with me and when I went to winding up, I threw one of them balls to first and one to second. I was so smooth I picked off both runners and fanned the batter without that ump or the other team even knowing it."
"The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal."
"There never was a man on earth who pitched as much as me. But the more I pitched, the stronger my arm would get."
"When a batter swings and I see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are then I just put the ball where I know he can't hit it."
"Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common."
"I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I would toss one that ain’t never been seen by this generation."
"Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move."
"They said I was the greatest pitcher they ever saw…I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t give me no justice."
"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
"Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines."
"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"
"Money and women. They're two of the strongest things in the world. The things you do for a woman you wouldn't do for anything else. Same with money."
"Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching."
"You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them."
"My pitching philosophy is simple; you gotta keep the ball off the fat part of the bat."
"I never had a job. I always played baseball."
"Mother always told me, if you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to no one else."
"Don't eat fried food, it angries up the blood."
-all the above are Satchel Paige


How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream.
Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often
or forever when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all?

fragment from Sherman Alexie


"Yeah I know the eagle flies at midnight but I want the purple lei and then we're gonna have some noodles. Do you think we scared that little tiny Chinese lady? No more coffee for you and no more ginger candy. Ewwww, that thing moved."
-John, Chinatown Honolulu 2004

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly
making exciting discoveries.
-- A. A. Milne

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
- Samuel Johnson

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.
-Henny Youngman

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
-Thomas H. Huxley

Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.
-Christina Baldwin

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven
and there plucked an strange and beautiful flower?
And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
-Virginia Woolf

Engrave this Quote "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way."
-Victor Frankl

"And how do I feel now that the author of an investigative story in L.A. Weekly believes that Nasdijj is a fraud and actually a white writer named Timothy Barrus? Vindicated? Well, sure. I dream of leaving "I told you so" messages on many voice mails, although unlike James Frey's publisher, who initially supported his lies and moral evasions about his exaggerated memoir, A Million Little Pieces, Nasdijj's publisher dropped him because of personality conflicts even before the L.A. Weekly story came out. Of course, Frey has sold millions of books and will probably sell a few million more. Nasdijj hasn't sold millions of books, and he will probably fade into obscurity. In response to the L.A. Weekly story, Nasdijj posted a rambling statement on his blog saying that people should pay attention to "real scandals" like poverty."

excerpt from interview with Sherman Alexie in Time magazine 1/29/06


The Riot
Gamaliel Bradford (1863–1932)

YOU may think my life is quiet.
I find it full of change,
An ever-varied diet,
As piquant as ’tis strange.

Wild thoughts are always flying,
Like sparks across my brain,
Now flashing out, now dying,
To kindle soon again.

Fine fancies set me thrilling,
And subtle monsters creep
Before my sight unwilling:
They even haunt my sleep.

One broad, perpetual riot
Enfolds me night and day.
You think my life is quiet?
You don’t know what you say.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
-Quentin Crisp

It turns out I'm working on a story that I had no idea I was going to write. So I've broken up my blog and parcelled out the "creative" stuff into various components under various names on my page (Dirty Linen and Story Talk started out as "Good Friday.").

I sat down for a general blog last Friday and it turned into the story of my last (hard) year. I thought it was too close and too sharp to be able to do anything with it. Now I'm not sure so I'll tuck it away over here and work on it as I maunder along. It turns out there were details I had put out of my mind and they were things I had promised myself to remember. There were moments when nothing important really happened and nothing deep was said but they are memories I feel a need to keep. And I think I had just put them away for awhile until they weren' t quite so hard to bear feeling. I opened the door and they are coming back in. Not terribly comfortable to have but I am grateful in an odd way for the painful bits as well as the truly sweet and the funny.


I started this on 4.6.07. There are changes throughout but the chunks I add will have a date to show where I left off and started anew.




Redundant. Any Friday is a good Friday. Today is especially good because I placed Peeps throughout the office. I thought of hiding eggs but that is sure to end badly. There's bound to be at least one forgotten egg that would eventually give off noxious clouds and put me in bad with my office mates. I threw in a few almond chocolate kisses and Cadbury mini-eggs. And because it has nothing to do with anything - I also brought in a huge bag of Meyer lemons.

This is a strange year for our plants. Good but strange. Last year we had spider mites everywhere and black spot on all the roses. We literally picked every leaf off of every rosebush to stop the spot. We were afraid we would lose the bushes and they are OLD. But even though the boys cut them down to the barest of branches - the roses are coming back. There are 50+ buds on each of the ancient trees flanking our front gate. They are bright orange Tropicanas. Along side the house all 8 bushes have tons of buds starting to open. Pathetically, I don't know the name of any except the Sterling Silver.

With the cold during January and February we thought we had lost our bougainvillea but they are coming back. We had a sad little jacaranda in a pot that my gran had carried around for the last 6 years and even though it froze it's coming back too. The lemon trees are absolutely covered in blooms and fruit and every night all around the house it smells of lemon blossom. We have 3 orchids blooming on the front porch and three inside the house. The Christmas cactus has decided to celebrate Easter instead this year so there are spiky fuschia blossoms all over it. And a decrepit old miniature carnation is showing buds.

All of this might not merit more than the normal attention of enjoying the onset of Spring, but this year it feels special. Last April we convinced my Gran to get an opinion from her doctor about pain she was having in her side. She had put it down to a couple of falls she had taken, in each of which she had knocked her ribs. She went in and the x-ray showed "a spot." I'm not a pessimist but I knew immediately it was bad. I knew the doctor well and I knew that her cautiousness was more than the norm. And I was right unfortunately. Through a series of frustrating and scary appointments we learned gran had advanced large-cell lung cancer. That's the scary one, the large-cell brand. One of the first things I read was that by the time this type of cancer was diagnosed it was too late for treatment in about 85% of cases.

My family of origin is small. Mostly because we have chosen to shed the members that are egregious jack-asses or just generally not nice. So it's pretty much mom and gran and I. Mom was not seeing or hearing how serious this diagnosis was. I can understand why, hearing your mom is terminally ill is really a gut punch. But it meant I had to become involved - going to all appointments, making lists of questions to ask, seeking out information, putting together the care that gran would need.

At the time, when she was diagnosed, gran didn't say it but later she told me she knew it was cancer and that it was bad before they actually told us how serious it was. Knowing that makes it more remarkable,to me that her first choice was to fight. Not that I thought she shouldn't or that she should give up - but to choose potentially debilitating and painful treatments when you are fairly certain you are going to die seems so odd to me. But she said it was because she knew she might be wrong - she might live and how would she know if she didn't try? Just over a month after the diagnosis we saw the oncologist for his opinion on treatment options. He said that given gran's age he normally wouldn't recommend treatment. However, as she had been extraordinarily healthy for an 86 year-old woman, he was willing to try if that was what she wanted. The choices were radiation or a pill form of a chemotherapy that would help to slow down and possible halt the growth of the tumour.

All of this started on April 16 of last year. I immediately went into crisis response mode. I bought nutrition drinks, put together high-calorie recipes, started a notebook tracking her meds and food and liquid intake. I had a night job so I couldn't stay at the house overnight but I would go out there every evening after work, stay until about 9:30 and then race to be home by 10:00. And I would cry all the way home each night driving toward my apartment and watching the last of the sunset over the Pacific. I stayed at the house on the weekends and talked to both of my employers about taking family care leave. The more I did the faster she seemed to deteriorate. Part of the deterioration was the medication. It was so bizarre that one of the biggest problems we ran into was gran's allergy to tylenol. Who knew? I didn't and I didn't realize until that how many things contain tylenol. Gran, who hated pills and would avoid them with the resolve of a very stubborn 5 year-old, was completely compliant with the pain meds. That was so frightening for me. I knew it had to be incredibly painful for her to take the pills so willingly. And it was such strong stuff - Tramadol, percocet, oxycontin, morphine, even Fentanyl patches.

So here we were with the emotional toll, watching helplessly as the pain became worse and worse for gran and all of it was complicated by the fact that mom was not there. I mean sure, physically she was, but emotionally it was just gran and I dealing with the reality, the actuality of the cancer. The time came very quickly, around the second week in May I think, that gran couldn't be left alone. She was weak and couldn't get around well. She was taking oxycontin for the pain and was groggy much of the time. She would forget to eat and was losing weight at a scary rate. She absolutely did not want us to tell any of the rest of the family or the family friends. We respected her wishes in that, as in all her choices, but both mom and I knew it was going to cause major problems when it came out that we had known for awhile and hadn't told anyone.

Early on the three of us sat down and I brought up the hard and ugly details like advanced care directives, final plans and gran's will. Mom could not do it. She had to leave while we talked about all of the details. I told gran that I hated the fact that we had to discuss these things but that I was okay taking care of the details. So we went over her directive and she told me what she wanted for her funeral, should that be a necessity. She was very pragmatic about it all and maybe that should have told me that she had a feeling that it was deeply serious, her illness.


(More later)

Another story in the works:


When I met Donna she was 71 and I was 16. She never left the house without full make-up, her nails were always polished and usually sported shades with names like Coral Fire or Tangerine Fizz. Her improbably golden apricot tinted hair was set in smooth curls, once a week, and she was one of the ladies of a previous generation who slept each night with her head wrapped in tissue and clips on the front curls. At least I’m assuming she used the tissue and clips – she certainly would not have let anyone, apart from her hairdresser, see her that way. She espoused the benefits of sleeping on one’s back in order to help deter wrinkles. Despite the age difference I was fascinated by her, her stories and her life. And we became friends. The first time I saw her I was impressed by her style. I would find later that her style had little of fashion or a desire for effect to it – her choices were always made with a confident sense of what worked or didn’t, in her life in all ways. And I would always wonder how much of the stories she told me was invention, how much experience.

It was the early 1980’s and Donna dressed almost exclusively in vintage clothing in violent shades of orange. She had perfectly preserved polyester pant suits dating from the 60’s that were in style once again. One memorable number was very Pucci-esque; swirls of acid green and safety orange highlighted with lavender and spots of yellow. I didn’t even know any teenagers who dressed with as much disregard for the opinions of others as Donna. As I came to know her better I came to think of her as a “dame.” There was nothing about Donna that was retiring or less than straightforward. She spoke her mind without reservation and had no time for those who mindlessly conformed to convention. Her drink was either an Old Fashioned or, on special occasions, very fine scotch taken neat. She was honest about her past but she tempered that honesty with a selectiveness about sharing the details. She was independent and without sentiment. Which is not to say Donna was unfeeling, she was certainly warm hearted; but as far as sweetness and light – they simply were not her cup of tea.

When we had known each other about 4 years I made the decision to attend an out-of-state college. About a month before I left our mutual friend Michelle was married. It was an enormous celebration – an Italian family wedding – and it carried on very late into the evening. That night Donna told me the best of her many stories.

Donna left Chicago for Reno in the early 1950’s. She needed a divorce and had rented a cottage at one of the divorce ranches to establish residency. During the six weeks she had to spend there, Donna decided that Reno was a good town for her. It was very small then, but there was gambling, the lake was nearby, and she could always go to San Francisco for shopping or to find the elegancies of life that Reno lacked. One factor that swayed her toward living there was the fact that she could be a bit of a big fish in a small pond. Donna was well educated, had a bit of money and had been a debutante in her day. She was a desirable guest at cocktail and dinner parties in what passed for high society in Reno. Another factor that kept her in Nevada was the men. Donna had decided marriage was not to her taste, but men, as a species, certainly were.

A year or so after her divorce was complete Donna received a phone call from an old friend from Chicago, a man named Martin who had known Donna and her husband. Martin was coming to the West for several weeks for an extended series of business meetings. Would it be alright to spend a few days in Reno and see Donna? She said of course and told Martin to let her know when his train would be arriving. Donna arranged for Martin to stay in one of the nicer hotels a few blocks from her apartment building. Martin arrived and immediately asked Donna to dinner that night. Of course she agreed. They had drinks and a lovely dinner at the best restaurant in town and then dancing at a jazz club called the Bundox. After last call Martin took the keys to Donna’s car and drove her home. He didn’t leave until quite late the next morning. They spent the next 4 days together and Martin gave up his motel room.

Before Martin boarded the train that would take him on to San Francisco and his business commitments he told Donna he had had a wonderful time. But there was something more he needed to say and was uncomfortable getting to the point. Donna suggested he just say whatever it was. Martin said that he did not want to insult her in any way but he wanted to give her a gift – a sort of combined thank you and remembrance gift. He asked if there was anything she would like that he could send her when he got back to the East Coast. Far from being offended, Donna said yes enthusiastically and immediately told him what she wanted. “Please send me a seven-bladed, gold-plated pocket knife with a pearl handle from Tiffany’s. I’ve always wanted one.” While Martin thought it an odd request, when he was in New York he arranged to have that precise knife engraved and sent to Donna packaged in a Tiffany blue box.

About a year passed and Donna heard from Martin again. He called to say that a colleague of his would be coming to Reno and would it be alright to give him Donna’s number? Martin said the gentleman would be spending 2 or 3 days in Reno before taking the Coast train up to Seattle. Donna saw nothing wrong with the idea and told Martin to make the introductions. When the gentleman (we’ll call him Bill) arrived, it was clear to Donna that Martin had not mentioned their “special” relationship. She and Bill had dinner and drinks at one of the nicest restaurants, he was courteous and thoughtful. Donna invited him to her home and they spent the next few days (and nights) together. Bill also wanted to give Donna a gift and when he asked her answer was the same. “I’d like to have a seven-bladed, gold-plated pocket knife with a pearl handle from Tiffany’s. I’ve always wanted one.” Bill, being the gentleman, did just as she asked.

Over the next few years the pattern repeated about 7 times and each time the request Donna made was the same, “Please send me a seven-bladed, gold-plated pocket knife with a pearl handle from Tiffany’s.” At some point the men began to talk, as men sometimes will, and they realized that they had each sent Donna a knife. Why on earth would she want all those pocket knives? Martin decided to ask.

Donna’s answer was fairly concise. She said “I have everything I need right now, it’s a very nice life. I have enough money, a fur coat, a nice car and a nice place to live. I have the company of a gentleman when I choose to and I go where I want when I want. But one day I may be poor, or have no car, I might be alone and not so lovely. But, Martin, there is nothing an 18 year old boy won’t do for a seven-bladed, gold-plated, pearl-handled pocket knife from Tiffany’s.”

And I – being very naïve for a 20 year-old, never knew whether it was the truth or not. I wanted to believe her but it seemed pretty improbable, yet if anyone could carry off such a stunt it would have been Donna. About a year after I left for school I returned home for a visit. I learned that Donna was very ill and I immediately went to her home. She was being seen to by a hired nurse, she had no family left. The nurse applied Donna’s make-up every morning and made sure her hair was always styled. I sat next to the bed and we talked for awhile. We never talked about her illness or her coming death. Just before I left Donna asked me to open the drawer of her night stand, she said she needed me to get something for her. Inside the drawer, sitting on top was a small blue Tiffany chamois bag. I looked at Donna and she had a huge grin. “I still have one left.”