California – Life In A Word

All Manor of Reflection

I find music boxes enchanting, especially the small glass cases where you can watch the cylinder spin its tune like a lazy water wheel. It’s as if someone opened the top, held it up to the wind, and captured a simple melody floating by. Maybe this is why I find the concept of a glass church so appealing. Welcome to California’s Crystal Cathedral.

Whether or not you liked Phillip Johnson’s Glass House from a couple of posts ago (survey says “not”), you’ll concede he was creative in his use of glass. The Crystal Cathedral is, by far, his most impressive example. When it was constructed in 1980, it was immediately dubbed the largest glass church in the world. By a mile.

Johnson designed the Cathedral (partnering with architect John Burgee) for Dr. Robert Schuller. Rev. Schuller was a televangelist in the 1970s, beginning his ministry by preaching to carloads from atop the refreshment stand of a Southern California drive-in theater. The proceeds of his Sunday morning “Hour of Power” financed the Cathedral, on a property Schuller called a “22-acre shopping center for Jesus Christ”. As for the building itself, Schuller declared, “If a two-by-four comes between your eyeball and the changing edge of a cloud, something is lost”. Hence, he demanded a glass church.

The Crystal Cathedral is impressive enough to look at from the surrounding parking lot; a flattened diamond floor plan covered with 10,000 rectangle panels of glued-on mirrored glass. But walk inside – and believe me, it’s a walk – passing beneath the floating bleachers of pews and choir lofts into the explosion of the sanctuary itself, and you’ll understand why the Cathedral really “shines”. The space is so vast that – like some of today’s enclosed football stadiums – you’ll swear you’re still outside.

The Crystal Cathedral is a glass music box of sorts. Its organ is the fifth-largest in the world, with 16,000 pipes. Its choir numbers into the hundreds of voices. Needless to say, the church service needs to be grand to satisfy a room of 2,500 parishioners.

As much as I prefer a modest venue for worship, I can appreciate the megachurch approach if it’s done with a modicum of grace. I’m not sure this is the case with the Crystal Cathedral. Down the center aisle you’ll find a long reflecting pool, spotted with gushing fountains that suddenly cease when Schuller appears at the pulpit. A pair of towering “Cape Canaveral” doors behind the altar swing open, so Schuller can give a wave and a prayer to the masses parked outside. And in a full-on nod to Broadway, the Cathedral’s annual “Glory of Christmas” pageant includes a smoke machine for storm simulations, seven flying angels, and scores of live animals (everything from camels to water buffaloes). Should this surprise me, in the cavernous glass box of a world-famous televangelist?

The Crystal Cathedral is open to the public… er, if you’re willing to take in a Catholic Mass while you’re at it. Schuller’s Reformed Church ministry filed for bankruptcy in 2010 (in part because of the overwhelming operating costs of the facility). Schuller himself died in 2015. Soon after, the local Catholic diocese purchased the property at a deep discount and renamed it “Christ Cathedral”. I hope the fountains, spaceship doors, and Broadway shows have taken a break since then. After all, the building itself is ample reason for reflection.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #9 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

We worked off-model again this week, on the house itself, assembling one floor at a time before everything comes together. 80 pages (or 88%, or 203 minutes) into the build, this is what we have:

It’s convenient to halt the construction for this photo, because you can see the individual floors before they’re stacked together and hidden. The level in the foreground is the bottom story, with the living room in back and smooth decks in front and to the right. The other level is the middle story, a bedroom with smaller balconies to the left and right.

Next week I’ll assemble the top (and final) level, a “gallery” whose use was as much for the surrounding views as for the interior space. Then I’ll stack the floors together, insert them into the open space you see to the right of the glass tower, and our Fallingwater model will finally be complete.

Tune in next Thursday as construction continues! Now for another nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church

Since we toured a cathedral today, it seems only fitting we acknowledge one of Wright’s handful of religious structures. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church was one of his last designs, not completed until after his death in 1959. Wright consulted his wife (who was raised in the faith) on its important symbols. Accordingly, the dome and the Greek cross play significantly in the building design. The structural arches and pillars reflected on the exterior allow the sanctuary to be an uninterrupted circular space. The dome is not as you would imagine the interior to be, but rather the cap on an inverted dome, reflecting as a sort of bowl suspended above the sanctuary.

Lest you think Annunciation Church is a bit of a spaceship, the design intentionally pulls elements from its more famous predecessor, Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church is included on America’s National Register of Historic Places.

Some content sourced from Johnson/Burgee: Architecture, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

This Gamble Pays Off

In the movie Back to the Future, there’s a memorable scene shortly after Marty McFly time-travels back to 1950s California. Marty looks up Doc Brown in the phone book and heads over to his house. Doc doesn’t recognize Marty when he opens the door but he drags him inside anyway. The scene is memorable because Doc’s house (the exterior, at least) is recognizable to any student of American architecture. Welcome to Pasadena’s Gamble House.

Maybe you guessed this Gamble wasn’t won in a wager (although it would’ve been a handsome payoff!) Rather, it was built for a member of the (Proctor &) Gamble family who liked the look of his next-door neighbor’s place. That house, and many others on the same street, was designed by sibling architects (Charles) Greene and (Henry) Greene. The Gamble House is perhaps their most famous design.

The Greene brothers, who studied architecture at MIT, made a significant stop on their journey to the West Coast. They spent time at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. While there, they picked up design influences from the temple look of the Japanese pavilion (wood construction, tiled roofs, open verandas).

The Greene and Greene “ultimate bungalow” look, with its liberal use of dark wood slats and panels, became known as the Craftsman style of architecture. This label was all the more fitting because the Greene brothers also studied furniture design, and incorporated many custom pieces into their houses. Even more impressive, the finished look relies on elegant leather straps and wooden pegs as fasteners; not a nail or screw in sight.

The Gamble House is 6,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor living, in concert with California’s mild temperatures. You can tour the house courtesy of the USC School of Architecture students who get to live there every school year (luckies!) A separate tour walks you through the neighborhood to see other Greene and Greene designs. But the Gamble remains their masterpiece. And if you ever see this inviting residence, you may wish you owned a time-traveling DeLorean to take you back to its heyday in the early 1900s.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #3 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

I find it funny how this Fallingwater model is “rising” off of its foundation at the same time the water below is “falling”. It’s like I’m going in opposite directions at the same time. 20 pages (or 22%, or 83 minutes) into the build, this is what we have.

As you can see, the stream is now “built” from the front of the house all the way to the back, with the modest waterfall front and center. We also have our first piece of “landscape”, that dark green strip you see on the left. Otherwise, we’re still at the foundation level. I expect the house to rise dramatically in the next few chapters of the build.

Here’s something unnerving about this model. You don’t really understand what you’re building as you go. You’re putting together very small pieces which look like, well, LEGO blocks, until you stand back and take the whole model in. For this reason, you have to build very, very carefully. I still got the location of a few pieces wrong and had to utilize my handy-dandy wrench to yank them out. It’s like pulling teeth.

Tune in next Thursday as construction continues! Now for another nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

Petttit Memorial Chapel

Over five hundred structures were built from the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, but only one of those five hundred is in a cemetery. That would be the Pettit Chapel in Belvidere, Illinois. Dr. Pettit was a beloved physician of his time, and his sudden passing prompted his wife to hire Wright to design a graveside chapel as a memorial to the man.

The design of the “petite” Pettit is very much in line with Wright’s signature Prairie Style. The low roof lines, broad eaves, and high horizontal bands of glass are typical. Wright used the shape of a cruciform – common in medieval cathedrals – to house the smallest of sanctuaries, as well as two open-air porches and a central fireplace. He then added storage, restrooms, and a furnace so the chapel could be used for public functions.

The Pettit Chapel has survived since its construction in 1906, thanks to restorations in 1977 and 2003. The chapel is open to the public, and, like many structures designed by Wright, included on America’s National Register of Historic Places.

Some content sourced from The Museum of Lost Things website article, “The Real ‘Back to the Future’ House”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Arid (and) Extra Dry

Most of us reacted to eighteen months in the unwelcome company of COVID-19 the same. We reflected on our time with Mr. Virus and wondered, “What would we have done more of?” More get-togethers? More travel? More dinners out? Yes, yes, and yes. But instead, we hunkered down and waited for things to get better. Our routines became more… routine. Everything faded to black and white. Clocks came to a standstill. It’s the same feeling I had, coincidentally, enduring a drive from Colorado to California earlier this month.

My advice: choose “East” while you still can

Maybe you’ve made the trek: Denver to San Diego via Interstate 70 and then Interstate 15. Sounds so clean and easy, doesn’t it? Two highways. Plenty of lanes. Rocky Mountains on one end and Pacific Ocean on the other. Yeah, well, it’s all the mind-numbing in-between stuff that makes you want to burst through your sunroof and flag down a helicopter heading west. There’s a whole lot of nothing in the desert.

The problem with this drive (which was not a flight because my wife & I wanted to bring our bikes) is the beautiful part comes first. From Denver, it’s four hours of majestic snow-capped mountains, rushing rivers, red rock canyons, and breathless (literally) summits as you cruise on over to Grand Junction. There’s good reason America the Beautiful was penned in the Rockies.

But don’t get comfortable. Once you reach Grand Junction (which isn’t so grand), beauty takes a big break. Pretend you’re a marble inside a rolled-up blanket. Then someone flips that blanket out and off you go, rolling across the flattest, most desolate desert floor you’ve ever seen. The mountains reduce to buttes reduce to sand dunes reduce to nothing. The highway morphs from all sorts of curvy to ruler-straight. Your cell phone signal goes MIA. You suddenly feel parched. And you wonder, why-oh-why does the dusty sign say “Welcome to Utah” when there’s nothing welcoming about it at all?

So it goes in middle-eastern Utah. Every exit is anonymously labeled “Ranch Road” (and why would you want to exit anyway?) The highway signs counting down the mileage to Interstate 15 march endlessly. When you finally do arrive at I-15 (your single steering wheel turn the entire journey), you bring out the balloons and the confetti and do a happy dance. YOU MADE IT ACROSS THE MOON! Well, sort of. Now you’re just in central Utah.

I-15 wanders south a couple hours to St. George. It’s probably a perfectly nice place to live, but St. George reminds me of the Middle East. Squarish stucco/stone buildings, mostly white. Not many people on the streets. The temperatures quietly ascended to triple digits when you weren’t looking. You realize you’re starting to sunburn through the car windows.

But then you make it to Arizona (briefly). The landscape changes, suddenly and dramatically, as if Arizona declares, “Take that, Utah! We’re a much prettier state!” You descend through curve after highway curve of a twisting, narrow canyon, rich with layers of red rock. It’s the entrance to the promised land! Alas, Arizona then gives way to Nevada, and here my friends, are the proverbial gates of Hell. Welcome to the arid, endless, scrub-oak-laden vastness of the Mojave Desert, where everything is decidedly dead except for a brief glittery oasis known as Las Vegas. The Mojave looks like it wants to swallow you whole and spit you out (except spit requires water so you’d probably just be gone forever).

Hang on to those dashboard gauges for dear life, friends, because it’s a full four hours in the Mojave broiler before your car gasps past the “Welcome to California” sign. In those hours you’ll call your kids (one last time?), declare your final wishes, and wonder why you didn’t visit your parents more often. Anything you see in motion off the highway is probably a mirage. If you do make it to California, you’ll pull over and kiss the ~~ground~~ sand before wondering, “Hey, how come California looks exactly like Nevada? Then Google Maps smirks the bad news. You’re nowhere near the end of the Mojave Desert.

Baker. Barstow. Victorville. Hesperia. You’ll pass through each of these towns and wonder, a) Why does anybody live here? and b) Is this the land that time forgot? But finally, mercifully, you’ll descend the mighty Cajon Pass (the outside temperature descending alongside you), burst forth onto the freeway spaghetti of the LA Basin, and declare, “Los Angeles. Thank the Good Lord. I must be close now”.

Except you’re not. The Basin is dozens of cities, hundreds of miles, and millions of cars collectively called “Los Angeles”. Hunker down, good buddy. The Pacific is still hours away.

Here’s the short of it. My wife & I made it to San Diego. The car didn’t die in the middle of the Mojave. Neither did we (though I left a piece of my soul behind). We even rode the bikes a few times. But I can’t account for those nineteen hours behind the wheel. It’s like Monday morning became Tuesday night in a single blink. Just like 2019 became 2021 without much in between.

What goes down must come back up. The time has come to do the death drive in reverse. Ugh. Maybe we’ll leave the bikes in San Diego and catch a flight instead.

Behind the Wheels

Every summer when my wife and I head to the West Coast for a little sunshine and sand, the only intentional exercise we get is a walk on the beach or a dip in the ocean. So this year we decided our vacation equation needed to get behind the wheels. We skipped the flight, racked the bikes onto the back of the SUV, and drove 1,100 Utah/Arizona/Nevada desert miles to bridge the gap between Colorado and California. Now the Pacific Coast sun shines above, the Pacific Ocean waves crash below, and the bikes… well, the bikes just beckon to be ridden every day.

It’s already happened, as I suspected it would. When we took our first pedal tour around this little seaside town, I saw him for a few fleeting moments. He was a younger, thinner, blonder version of me. He was seated confidently behind the drop handlebars of a white Nishiki Regal ten-speed, focused solely on the road in front of him. He was dressed in Converse tennis shoes, ballcap in place of a bike helmet, white socks halfway to the knees. When this kid wasn’t body surfing, playing basketball, or working the evening shift at McDonald’s, he was logging mile after mile on his bicycle, in search of driver’s license freedoms, even if he wasn’t old enough to have one.

My fleeting companion is the “me” of forty-five years ago. In most respects it’s a long period of time. In others we could be talking about last week. Bicycling was serious thread in the fabric of my childhood. It was a way to leave the familiar behind, to pursue esoteric wonders beyond the streets I grew up on. Bicycling asked the questions, “Where would you like to go?” “Why?” “And how far?” At fifteen years old, the answers were limitless.

My love of cycling began at a young age (and continues today in weekly spin classes at the gym). I still remember the very first hand-me-down bike my brothers and I shared – a small blue two-wheeler with no gears, the kind you had to pedal backward to brake. From there I graduated to a glam Schwinn Lemon Peeler Sting Ray, the all-yellow beauty with the fenders above fat tires, sporting the signature banana seat.

But my Nishiki Regal ten-speed brought bicycling to a whole new level. I bought it myself: months of hard-earned allowance and odd-jobs cash plunked down for the biggest purchase of my young life. The Nishiki granted me access to the more sophisticated language of bicycling; terms like “chain stay”, “saddle”, and “derailleur”, even if I couldn’t afford the Raleigh or Motobecane imports more deserving of those words.

Also, the Nishiki meant bike maintenance became a labor of love instead of a chore; a bonding afternoon with friends. The shade of my dad’s carport colored our “workshop”, where we dismantled, fine-tuned, and reassembled over and over; my friends and I exchanging tools and advice for each other’s spare parts. I still remember the final touch when the Nishiki was all back together: the pristine white finishing tape wrapped carefully around those drop handlebars, signifying it was finally time to ride.

One story of me and my Nishiki will always stand out. It was all about beating the school bus home. When the bell rang after my final class, I’d sprint to the rack, jump on my bike, and launch into the six-mile trek back to my house. The bus meanwhile, needed several minutes to load its passengers, not to mention dozens of stops before it would’ve dropped me. It was always a neck-and-neck battle as I’d pass the bus and then it’d pass me. Most times I’d lose the race by mere seconds, easing up on the pedals in exhausted frustration. But every now and then I’d get the victory. Did some of my friends deliberately take their time exiting the bus, knowing I was in hot pursuit? Maybe.

In 1979, a few months after I turned seventeen, a wonderful little film called Breaking Away won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie centered around four friends, bicycling, and Bloomington, Indiana’s “Little 500” bike race, but it was mostly about coming of age. Learning life’s lessons while putting the miles on the pedals.

Little wonder Breaking Away‘s lead character was named Dave.

[Note: If anything about this post resonates with you, be sure to read Steve Rushin’s Sting-Ray Afternoons. The author’s childhood is set in Minnesota, but the growing-up memories are remarkably similar to my own. Even the kid on the cover looks a little like me. Steve and I could’ve been brothers.]

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Dots ‘n’ Dashes

Back in my days in the Boy Scouts, they had a merit badge called “Signaling”. To earn the badge you had to build a basic communication device (buzzer, blinker) and demonstrate a knowledge of Semaphore – visual signaling by flags – and Morse – audible signaling by “dots” and “dashes”. Today most people wouldn’t have a clue about Semaphore, and their only familiarity with Morse might be from the frantic telegraph typing in the movie Titanic. Dots ‘n’ dashes have stepped down, more associated with the mundane pavement markings of the streets we drive. Well hey, at least they’re still signaling devices.

Let’s talk about street dashes first. The highway to our rural neighborhood was recently restriped, mostly dashes but occasionally a solid for safety’s sake. Some lanes were shifted, and they just covered up the old stripes with blackish paint similar to the asphalt below. But my car was not fooled, no sir. It still sees the old striping. Anytime I pass over those areas my car’s “lane-keeping assist” emits an audible warning and tries to bump me back onto the road, when in fact I’m just passing over covered-up stripes. That’s annoying. Either car tech needs to improve or road striping needs to come up with a better cover. Until one or the other happens I’m all over the road.

Here’s an even better story about dashes. Long ago, my parents were driving my brothers and me back from my grandparents’ house. We were cruising along a paved winding road late at night when all of a sudden my dad gets to wondering about those highway dashes. He starts to guess – if you measured one, how long would a dash be? Talk about useless information, right? But then, right in the middle of a darkened highway, no cars in the rear-view mirror, my father stops the car, gets out, and starts measuring a dash, foot-in-front-of-foot like he’s taking a sobriety test. Then he gets back into the car and announces proudly, “six feet”. Think about that the next time you pass those stripes at forty miles an hour. (But please, don’t get out and actually measure one).

California highways are usually dotted, not dashed.

Now let’s talk about street dots. You know, those round, non-reflective raised pavement markers used to designate lanes and borders and such? They’re actually called Botts’ dots. It’s a name I’ve known since childhood because I grew up in California where they were invented. California has over 25 million of the little guys marking its endless streets. And if you must know, Botts’ dots were named for their inventor, Elbert Dysart Botts (and how’s that for a mouthful?)

Botts’ dots might’ve never been a thing were it not for their total makeover. At first they were glass discs attached to the road with nails. (How’d you like to have that job? Whack, whack, whack!). But then they started popping loose, and people got flat tires from the nails and the broken glass. So Botts (or a coworker) devised a hard plastic to replace the glass and an asphalt-friendly epoxy to replace the nails. Now the dots – and the speeding cars above them – stay where they’re supposed to.

But now Botts’ dots have a whole new challenge. We face a future with self-driving cars. Turns out, Botts’ dots mess with that technology. The car may or may not recognize a dot as the border of a lane. That’s not good when you put your steering wheel in the hands of a robo-chauffeur. But can you imagine the task of removing 25 million Botts’ dots? That’s worse than hammering them in one by one!

Botts’ dots may go the way of the telegraph.

Over here in rural Colorado, I got pretty excited about the prospect of California surrendering all of its Botts’ dots. We can use ’em. You see, out here we have mostly two-lane highways divided by dashes, or occasionally solid lines instead of the dashes (don’t pass!), or very occasionally the luxury of a defined left-turn lane. But “dash-it-all” when it snows. You not only lose the striping, you lose the road. At least a Bott’s dot would make noise and give you a jolt to let you know you’re not about to cruise into somebody’s cow pasture.

Alas, my dream of millions of Botts’ dots flying over the Rocky Mountains died before it was born. Turns out the asphalt epoxy of a Botts’ dot cannot compete with the combined weight and speed of a snowplow. The dots’d go flying every which way from the snowplow blade, like hundreds of tiny shuffleboard discs. Ping! Ping! Ping!

Signaling merit badge was retired by the Boy Scouts in 1992 (yet another reminder of my advancing age). Looks like the Botts’ dot is headed for a similar scrap heap, at least if self-driving cars become more mainstream. Meanwhile, you’ll find me out in my neighborhood navigating the painted dashes. Even if I do prefer the dots.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Mass Distraction

Hundreds (if not thousands) of bloggers commented on last weekend’s tragic events in El Paso and Dayton. A search of either city on the WordPress website produces an endless list of posts. As it should be. Some of us process by writing; others by reading. Within these countless perspectives are paragraphs to help us cope, reflect, heal, and begin to move on. Not that we should move on; not at all. Like 9/11, the loss of life is meaningless if it doesn’t lead to a modicum of positive change.

Politicians will debate this issue relentlessly; their credibility questionable in concert with partisan agendas and unrealistic campaign promises. The media will focus on band-aid suggestions which appear to address the issue but don’t land anywhere close to its foundations. Regardless, if all this attention – misguided as it may be – leads to constructive conversation and heightened awareness, we’re taking a step in the right direction. The capacity for mass murder is far more complicated than we want to admit.

I tried several times this week to blog as normal. I found the usual du jour topics worth delving into. Yet every time I started typing I was distracted, for at least a couple of reasons. One, any topic besides this one would be utterly trivial by comparison. Two, any topic besides this one suggests my head – and my heart – are not where they should be.

Do I know anyone in El Paso? No, I don’t, nor in Dayton. Doesn’t matter. I still grieve for the victims and their families. After all, these are fellow countrymen and women. These are people I believe share similar values and a love of country, regardless of race, political persuasion, and all the other so-called differentiators. These are people I’d be delighted to run into if I were halfway around the world. They are far from strangers.

American flags fly at half-staff this week, as if our country needs a reminder of a horrific behavior already ingrained in our culture for decades. My own reminder is my inability to adequately express my myriad feelings today. Perhaps the writings of my fellow bloggers will bring me solace.

Speaking of other writers, my thanks to Feeding On Folly, who re-posted Mitch Teemley’s “The 32 Second Killing Spree” (read it here). Mitch’s post narrows the issue to the specifics we need to consider and the questions we must answer. Here’s one answer. Good and evil will always coexist, but we have to find a way to tip the scales a little more towards the good. If only for them.

I’ll be back next week, less troubled and a little more hopeful. At least, that’s the plan.

Slipping Away

Every time we travel to California – this past weekend, for example – I have to be reminded about their statewide ban on single-use plastic carryout bags. You think I’d remember – Cali put the kibosh on the bags three years ago. Still, we fill our basket with groceries, head to the check-out, and the cashier goes, “want to purchase bags?” Argh. I should store a couple of reusables in my suitcase; the very ones I keep in my car in Colorado.

Plastic straws followed plastic bags, of course. Four months ago, the Golden State placed “discouragement” on the plastic variety (you must ask for them now). We sat down to a meal and our waitress brought glasses of water – with paper straws (argh again). Admittedly, “legal” sippers are pretty good. No reduction to mush like breakfast cereal sitting too long in milk. Other than the cost (several times more than plastic), and the fine ($25/day for un-requested plastic), paper straws are hardly inconvenient.

Now then, the real topic for today. California is looking to “strike up the ban” yet again – on paper receipts; the little critters we receive after credit card transactions. Say it isn’t so, West Coasters! Bags and straws I can deal with, but a ban on paper receipts? That’s just stealing another book from my old-school library.

According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the facts are these: paper receipts generate 686 million pounds of waste per year. (Can someone please quantify 686 million pounds – say, number of filled swimming pools?) Paper receipts also generate 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide. (Again, quantify – number of breathing humans?) Also, paper receipts contain Bisphenol A (BPA); not exactly an appetizing compound. In other words, don’t eat your receipts just because the food was lousy.

Without paper receipts, my personal budget maintenance takes a blow. I keep everything in Quicken, so give me points for electronic accounting. But I also use paper receipts – an old-fashioned double-check mechanism. I enter the transaction from the receipt; then cross-check against the Visa statement (Jacob Marley reincarnated?) Why do I do this? Because once upon a time a waiter decided to triple my tip after I’d signed the bill and left the restaurant. Later, my paper receipt didn’t reconcile with my Visa statement. Busted. I promptly called the manager, who investigated and lo-and-behold, discovered a pattern of gouging. The waiter was fired. More points for me!

Now here’s the irony in my triple-the-tip story. What if the restaurant didn’t use paper receipts? What if I processed my transaction through Square or an iPad, self-swiping my card and choosing the percentage tip? For starters (and finishers) there wouldn’t have been gouging because there wouldn’t have been a waiter. It would be like standing over the shoulder of the processor at Visa – instant reconciliation. In effect, my story is a vote for no paper receipts.

Truth be told, I’m already evolving – slowly – from paper receipts. When given the choice (Home Depot comes to mind), I select “email receipt” or “no receipt” more often than “paper”. Unlike robo-calls, I accept the unsolicited side effects of electronic commerce (i.e. email spam). In a nod to maintaining control, I select self-check-in at airports and self-check-out at markets.

More likely, I’m caving on paper receipts because I’ve already done so with a laundry list of other paper products. My written letters have (d)evolved into email. My paper-printed books have dissolved into bits/bytes on my Kindle e-reader. My to-do lists now reside in a phone app. Bills arrive in my online inbox instead of my streetside mailbox.

Phil Dyer, one reader of the Wall Street Journal piece, commented, “California will soon attempt to regulate earthquakes”. 49 of 50 U.S. states just LOL’d. Me, not so much. After all, I never thought I’d see the day where I’d give up my paper receipts.

Jack Be Quick

If the lazy days of summer sap your get-up-n-go, here’s an idea. Find a friendly donkey (not a stubborn one). Halter him and attach a solid lead rope – at least fifteen feet worth. Saddle your jack with thirty pounds of gear, including a pick, a shovel, and a gold pan. Finally, don your running shoes and head out to Fairplay, CO. $50 gets you into the World Championship of Pack Burro Racing. Welcome to the state sport of Colorado.

Pack burro racing seemed a little ridiculous to me… until I dived into the details. For starters, its origin is as legendary as the Greeks and the marathon. Back in the strike-it-rich days, two Colorado gold-miners hit it big in the same location, and supposedly raced back to town (burros in tow) – first miner to the claims office wins. Here’s another detail: pack burro racing really is a marathon – 28-30 miles up and back with your donkey, making the halfway turn at an elevation of 13,000 ft. My favorite rule? No riding. However, the runner may push, pull, drag, or carry the burro. Carry the burro? A thousand pounds of ass?

Capitals, flags, songs, and birds – of course – but I never knew states had official sports, until recently, when California considered its options. If your first choice for the Golden State is surfing, California’s state assembly agrees with you. The Wall Street Journal reports the assembly just passed the “bill”, and now the tiff moves to the state senate. I say tiff because a host of other Cali residents say not so fast. Those who don’t live near the beach choose skateboarding. Why skateboarding? Because surfing is already the state sport of Hawaii. They also say skateboarding is essentially surfing on wheels. Maybe.

I grew up in California, but neither surfed nor skateboarded. Still, I deserve a vote. I did my share of body-surfing, so know what it’s like to catch a wave. I did my share of bicycling, so know what it’s like to cruise on wheels. You can put yourself in either camp, but arguments abound for both. As one state assemblyman said, “Hawaii may have invented surfing, but California ‘mainstreamed’ the sport”. Others say, “Surf ranches” and their wave machines bring the sport to the inland areas of the state. On the other side of the aisle, skateboarding is a sport enjoyed by the masses just about anywhere. And skateboarding really was invented in California, evolving from crude combinations of roller skates and wooden produce boxes. Marty McFly should get a vote too.

By coincidence, surfing and skateboarding will join the Olympics in 2020. The lighting of the torch in Tokyo will surely reignite the debate in California, no matter which sport is chosen. Or maybe the state will still be arguing one over the other, instead of dealing with – ahem – more important issues of government.

Only a handful of U.S. states claim a sport in their list of symbols. Some make sense, as in Alaska (dog-mushing), Minnesota (ice hockey), and Wyoming (rodeo). Others have me saying, “What the heck?”, as in Maryland (jousting), and Delaware (bicycling). I don’t live in Maryland or Delaware. Maybe they banned every other sport in those states. Of course, Marylanders and Delawareans probably feel the same way about Colorado and its pack burro racing.

Admittedly, Colorado could wage a healthy state-sport debate of its own. The Rocky Mountains alone inspire a half-dozen seemingly better options. If on water, go with river-rafting or kayaking. If on snow, go with skiing or snowboarding. If on land, go with hiking or mountain biking. Yet none of those acknowledge the state’s rich lore of gold-mining. None of them combine a human activity with an equestrian one. Come to think of it, Colorado has enough runners and horses to win the debate, gold-mining legend or not.

According to the Western Pack Burro Association (“Celebrating 70 Years of Hauling Ass”), Colorado’s pack burro racing series still has several to go this year. The first three are considered the “Triple Crown”, but I can still catch the remaining action in the towns of Leadville, Buena Vista, and Victor. It’ll be like the running of the bulls in Pamplona!

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

American Tune-Up

Each of the fifty United States is represented by more than just a flag. America’s state symbols include animals, birds, trees, flowers, and songs. As a kid growing up in California I memorized these items, and years later I’ve still got them. The “Golden State” has the Grizzly Bear, the Valley Quail, the Redwood, the Poppy, and “I Love You, California”. Imagine my interest then, when Brooklyn Magazine took an updated stab at the state songs, publishing “The Musical Map of the United States”.

Image courtesy of Brooklyn Magazine, October 2016

Brooklyn Mag’s map is more than meets the eye (see here). It’s not a collection of easy ditties you and I might come up with: Beach Boys for CA, John Denver for CO, Frank Sinatra for NY. Instead, it’s a broad spectrum of lesser-known tunes, attached to the states by writers who chose them. Read their stories and listen to their song choices. It’s like 50+ blogs in one, plus a playlist if you want to shift the whole shebang to your smartphone.

Here’s a sampling of the Map’s creativity. The writers chose Kenny Knight’s “America” for Colorado, a “dusty, country rock gem” with lyrics befitting its patriotic title (even if the song itself twangs along modestly). For California, the writers needed two songs – Joni Mitchell’s “California”, and Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode”. The former artist is Canadian; the latter raised in the gangland streets of Compton near Los Angeles. You’ll find Mitchell’s folk music as appropriate as Dre’s rap for such a diverse state.

As I studied the Map, I realized each of us possesses our own musical geography, accumulating map dots as we move through life. My own map began on the 8-track player of my father’s Cadillac in the 1960’s, crooning along with Perry Como as he claimed, “the bluest skies you’ve ever seen (are) in Seattle”. By the 1970’s, I’d moved on to a hard-earned collection of 45-rpm records (“singles”), focusing on Top 40 bubble-gum one-hit wonders like Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died” and Terry Jack’s “Seasons in the Sun”. Also in the 70’s – courtesy of my brother’s extensive LP collection (and a stereo capable of a sonic boom) – I mapped to all kinds of rock, including Emerson Lake, & Palmer, The Eagles, Elton John, and Linda Ronstadt.

By the 1980’s, I’d graduated to cassette tapes and the easy-listening music of John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, and Barry Manilow (to which some would say, two steps forward three steps back). Later in the ’80’s, I embraced compact discs with a budding affection for country music (Alabama), continuing to this day (Thomas Rhett).

Throw in a handful of downloads from my kids (Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor), sprinkle the whole mess with classical symphonies and concertos – a carryover from childhood piano lessons – and you have my musical map. I’ll bet yours is wildly different.

Even the world of sports has a musical map, as Steve Rushin wrote in an excellent piece in this week’s Sports Illustrated (“Cheer and Trebling”). You can’t hear the whistling of “Sweet Georgia Brown” without thinking Harlem Globetrotters, just as you can’t make it through baseball’s seventh inning without singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. You won’t leave Yankee Stadium without Sinatra’s “New York, New York”, just as you won’t hear John Williams’ spectacular “Fanfare” without thinking Olympic Games. Moments of silence at sporting events are literally reserved for the dearly departed. Otherwise it’s all marching bands, pipe organs, and loudspeaker instrumentals.

My now-home state Colorado has a set of symbols like California. The “Centennial State” has the Bighorn Sheep, the Lark Bunting, the Blue Spruce, the Columbine, and John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High”. But the song could just as easily be Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful”, inspired by the Rocky Mountain peak I can see as I type. The song could also be Kenny Knight’s “America”.

You listen. You choose. There are no right or wrong answers here. Remember, even Google Maps gives you several options as you navigate your way.

Space Invader

Last week my family and I were on the road, heading west to Los Angeles. One morning we stopped for breakfast just short of the California state line. As I was paying and the cashier handed back my receipt, I asked her, “so… how’s your day going today?” She gave me a wary smile and replied “f-i-n-e…”. Then she looked at me a little more carefully and asked back (with no small amount of curiosity), “where you from, anyway?” And that’s when it hit me – I had invaded her personal space. At least, the big-city version of personal space.

Take a step back and assess the town you live in. You’ll quickly decide whether you live in the “small” or the “big” variety. I’m not talking about physical size (though size does matter – ha). No, I’m talking about the chemistry of the place, and how you interact with the people around you.

I live in a rural area, and the surrounding towns are not much bigger than “one-street”. And here’s what I observe. People wave to each other from their cars or when walking on the road. People take face-to-face moments – however small – to have conversation. People gather at the local establishments to catch up with each other. The “hometown” parades and festivals and meals still draw decent crowds.

The big city – for all its energy and activities and diversity – is much more insular at the individual level. Its residents seek the comfort of their personal space, whether that is defined as neighborhood or house or even electronic device (personal space guaranteed by headphones and music). Indeed, retreat to personal space in the big city is a survival tactic – a stab at decompression and calm after the hectic hours on the sidewalk or in the car or office.

Be careful if you assume I favor small-town over big-city – far from it. I simply observe the outward differences as well as the inward coping mechanisms. In small towns we tend to have only one of everything (i.e. Mexican restaurant, Starbucks, dry cleaner). In big cities the choices are so vast that choosing Chipotle over the several local options feels like selling yourself short. As my big-city brother so succinctly puts it: small-town means opening the newspaper to see what there is to do, while big-city means deciding what you want to do; then opening the newspaper to see where it’s happening.

Small-town interactions fill the void of perhaps too much time in isolation. Big-city personal spaces ease the stress of perhaps too much time in the crowds. Hence it’s interesting to flip the dynamic every now and then, as I did with my breakfast cashier. She was comfortable in her personal space until I invaded with my casual question. And maybe just for a moment, she let down her distrust guard and realized I was simply interested in how her day was going.