February 27 2010

February 28 2010

Ruth’s 90th Birthday

More pictures

Ruth Howell was born in November 1916 in Houstonia, Mo., to Grace (Montgomery) and John Herring, and died peacefully of natural causes Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010, in San Luis Obispo. After attending secretarial school in Sedalia, Mo., she worked for the US Department of Agriculture in Nevada, Mo., and then the Department of War. She was stationed in Midland, Texas, as a secretary in a hospital for “shell shocked” soldiers. There, she and William Robert “Bill” Howell, Army Air Corps Lieutenant from Nevada, Mo., became engaged. They married in Long Beach, Calif., February 6, 1944, and their daughter, Janet was born in 1945. They moved to Lakewood, Calif., and their son, Mark was born in 1950. Ruth and Bill helped found Lakewood First Presbyterian Church, where she taught Sunday school. She volunteered for the Community Hospital of Long Beach for over 40 years and helped run the gift shop. In 2002, Ruth moved to San Luis Obispo and enjoyed living at the Palms, then Garden Creek Assisted Living. Ruth loved family, children, music, art, traveling, sewing and gardening. She was an active, involved and beloved mother and grandmother. Her engaging sense of humor earned her many friendships over her long lifetime, and her youthful spirit was reflected by the fact that her hair never turned gray. Ruth is survived by her daughter, Jan Howell (Steven) Marx of San Luis Obispo; son, William Mark (Sonia) Howell of Lakewood; grandchildren Joe (Amy) Marx of Ketchum Idaho, Claire Fisher of San Luis Obispo, Emma (Travis) Smith of Long Beach and Marie Howell of Santa Barbara; step-grandson, Mitchell Benjamin; great-grandchildren Ian Fisher, Ethan Marx, Abel Marx and Lucas Green; sister, Mary Helen French of San Diego; as well as numerous nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband of 40 years, Bill; brother, John Herring; sister, Louise Butts; and cousin, Dorothy Cronk. A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010, at Garden Creek Assisted Living, 73 Broad St. in San Luis Obispo. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Hospice Partners of the Central Coast, 277 South St. Ste. R, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401, or Central Coast Memorial Society, P.O. Box 679, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406.

Thank you all for coming.  My mother had three happy years in Garden Creek Assisted Living, and many of her friends still live here. We decided to hold the service here so they could attend.  I would like to thank Garden Creek for allowing us to be here today.

Emma Ruth Howell was born in Houstonia, Missouri 1916, four years before women got the right to vote.  She told me that her earliest memories were of horses, buggies and carts.  Her great grandfather Reverend John Montgomery was a pioneering Presbyterian minister and her great grandmother Katherine Lee Rennick was descended from Mayflower and Jamestown Lee families.  Her 93 years saw the Depression, WW II, and the advent of computers and cell phones. Just imagine the changes during her lifetime.

She told me that 16 was her lucky number because she was born in 1916 and she was 16 in her heart.  I remember her at her happiest as an energetic, fun loving, creative young mother in Long Beach California.  She helped found Lakewood Presbyterian Church, taught Sunday school and volunteered tirelessly for the local hospital, the PTA and the community. We had all kinds of pets and she turned our backyard into a garden. She always wanted to be “modern.” She enjoyed living in a brand new town, having a shiny Formica kitchen table, a new Chevy with tail fins, and her very own washing machine. She was proud our family was the first on our block to have a television.

She loved her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  She took excellent care of us children, her husband Bill, her grandchildren and of herself. She worked out with Jack LaLanne when he was on TV and later at his gym in person. After Bill, our Dad and her husband of 43 years died, Ruth carried on and enjoyed her independence.  She traveled to Japan, Israel, Egypt and Africa.

Even in her old age, she had an active and curious mind and wanted to know all about the news and the latest technology.  She loved the Bible and was fascinated with its history and archeology. She taught us habits of punctuality, honesty, responsibility, thrift, hard work and the importance of walking on “the sunny side of the street.” She valued relationships above all else. She made friends even during the last days of her life, as shown by the presence of her Hospice nurse and her last caregivers here at this service.

It was a rare privilege for me to have spent the last seven years living close to my mother.  We got to know each other as adults and had lots of “sister fun” together. Ever since she died, so many people have been telling me how much she meant to them, how she reached out and lifted their spirits.  I miss her and I know I will miss her every day of my life, but I am thankful that she no longer has to contend with the aches and pains of her last year. I do not believe that her love has died, because we all still feel it in our hearts.  As Emily Dickinson wrote:  “Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”

Luscious sounds of rumbling thunder and rain tapping on skylights.  Still dark at 6:30.

After preparing a solo dinner last night with rappacini from the farmers market and a glass of wine, I lay down on the bed for a nap, which lasted until this morning. Tensing with the pains in my back and joints all day left me exhausted.  Settling under the old feather comforter felt wonderful, as if I had been up all night or spent hours at hard labor in the cold, even though it hadnt been a strenuous day, especially by comparison to Jan’s, who was at a Council meeting that would probably go till midnight.  I’d accompanied Lucas and Claire to the dentist in Arroyo Grande, driven home for lunch, driven back to A.G. at Dennis’ request to take Ian out of school and get his cast removed, gone with him to the beach to look at  storm waves and topple little sand cliffs, and then stopped at the nursing home to see Ruth.  It was a shock to find her no longer dressed in her wheelchair, but sprawled in bed in a flimsy hospital gown without glasses or hearing aids or false teeth, her mouth shriveled and gaping, her hair lusterless, her skin gray, her brow  furrowed.  I announced my presence and took her hand.  She squeezed it once, then pushed it away,  shuffled on the mattress, and resumed fingering the edge of her gown. One word escaped her: “help.”  Then she quieted, apparently off to morphine-induced sleep, though her brow never relaxed.

The night before, Jan prepared an elegant dinner for Patricia whom we hadn’t seen in two years, since before her cancer diagnosis, radiation, chemo, and surgery.  She was as vital, busy and considerate as ever, full of lighthearted stories of her ordeal and triumph, of recollections of experiences we’ve shared, of questions about us and the family, and of her own burgeoning plans for this year—directing six productions at PCPA while teaching full time.

On the topic of feeling pain during her new exercise-physical therapy routine I was especially engaged—trying to distinguish between the benefits of pushing limits of  endurance and recognizing signals to pull back, use drugs, seek medical help.  The knee surgeon had told me two weeks ago to take four Aleve per day to see if that reduced swelling, but after reading of the long-term side effects of such regular use, I was experimenting with doing without it and working in the yard.  The results were not encouraging.

All this wintry local experience takes place within the darker framework painted by the news flooding in on radio, internet, and newspaper.  The failure of Obama’s promise, confirmed by the fizzling of the Copenhagen talks on climate change,  the widening of war in Afganistan,  the increase of debt and reduction of government services, and by yesterday’s Republican victory in Massachusetts.  And behind this political gloom lurks the metaphysical horror of the earthquake in Haiti.

I’m in the habit of preceding my morning meditation with prayers to a god whose existence I don’t believe in. I make three silent utterances beginning, “Thank you,” “Please,” and “I’m sorry.”  The Please is most often for cure of disease or alleviation of suffering by friends and family members: “let the chemo work for T…, let the tumor  be benign for P, let R rest in peace.”  These requests affirm my concerns, discharge obligations and create the illusion of sending  positive influence their way through my obeisance to a higher power.  But when I think of the suffering in Haiti, the Please bounces back at me.  Even suspending disbelief and regressing to the innocence of the first graders in Ian’s  school who a dozen times a day hear of God’s benevolent intentions, I cant imagine a personality who would unrelentingly torment so many people while allowing me to listen to their story on the radio as I cook myself supper.

This website is the beginning of my endgame.

My aim is to do this kind of sifting of grain from chaff with the motley collection of journals and letters that fill my file cabinet. I’m content with the belief that this life is all I get. Rather than a mess to clean up, I’d like to leave behind an ordered recollection of what I’ve learned and enjoyed.

I wrote that three years ago on the  “about” page  of this weblog.

I knew then I was starting a big project.  The more I work on it, the larger it gets. Not really then an endgame.

Next week mother-in-law Ruth will be 93. This morning I visited her in Sydney Creek, the Dementia Facility.  As usual when I arrive, she is asleep in her chair, but she perks up immediately, light streaming from her almost blind eyes, her voice clear and joyful.  She tells me her dreams and hallucinations and memories.  She picks up our last conversation where it left off.  I report on Claire and the two great-grandkids, she listens and laughs and says, “I remember those playground toys you built for her in your backyard in Claremont.”

That was 1983.  I tell her that just this summer the cable and hardware for that tree trolley, which I’d stowed  in an old carpenter’s chest salvaged from the farm, returned to Canada, where Joe rigged it up at Knoll House for the use of his kids, their friends, parents and grandparents.

Back home I dig old pictures out of a huge lateral file drawer  and scan a few to match with this summer’s.

The galvanized steel of the cables and eyebolts and the polyethelyne of the rope are more durable than other artifacts I’ve been excavating.  Week before last I spent many hours in the Cal Poly Art Resource Library using its expensive equipment to scan 250 35mm slides that had been boxed in cassette trays in my garage. They record moments from our wedding, from early days on the farm, from our family trips to Europe in 1978, to Hawaii in 1984, from our time in Claremont and Palo Alto. The slides were covered with dust and grease and their colors were faded and distorted. The scanner software and adjustments in Photoshop brought them back to life, some almost as good as new, many better.  I gasped as our images of thirty years ago revived on the monitor.

I  spent much of the previous week in the CLA computer lab converting old VHS videotapes of English 510 Players productions of Twelfth Night (1990) and The Winter’s Tale (1994) to binary files.  Like the slides, they needed to be restored to a more accessible and permanent medium.  I’d discovered that the dozens of short segments I’d digitized nine years ago and placed on the University Media Server to provide material for my Triangulating Shakespeare website had decomposed over time into a kind of pixel jelly. Now I could replace them in larger, clearer format and at full length.  But the new digital files will probably be no less fragile than the previous ones I’d assumed would last forever.  The problem is called “bit-rot.” See the entry called “Data decay: even computers forget” on the Australian blog,  Time, etc.; Humans in the big scheme of things.

This echoes the title of the work that Shakespeare rewrote as The Winters Tale, Thomas Greene’s The Triumph of Time. As I played and rewound and spliced the recitation of the character named “TIME”  in Act 4, Scene 1 (performed fifteen years ago by the daughter of my wife’s best friend in elementary school) I slipped into the allegorical role myself:

I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass
The same I am, ere ancient’st order was
Or what is now received: I witness to
The times that brought them in; so shall I do
To the freshest things now reigning and make stale
The glistering of this present, as my tale
Now seems to it.

When I watched the final scene, where a memorial statue comes to life after its subject was thought to have been dead for sixteen years scripted  as a theatrical resurrection in a chapel, I felt that moment  of performance on the altar of San Luis Obispo’s  1762 Mission Church quickening again, wrinkled now but still warm.

POSTSCRIPTS:

January 20 2010: Wow! Just watched the old Measure for Measure video. Really amazing that you managed to get such solid performance out of non-acting students. I found the play charming and — most importantly — the language really came alive. You should do some directing for community theater. — Elizabeth

November 30 2009: It was wonderful to hear from you. I just got started on Facebook. Wishing you happy holidays, Don

November 28 2009: How wonderful to hear from you! Unfortunately I can’t seem to open this link – which might be a good thing as I think I was a pretty shockingly bad actress–Ann

November 24 2009: Thanks Steven–it’s amazing!  Tom

November 24 2009: Hi Steven! Wow. Thanks for this treasure trove! I remember lending my VHS copy of”Twelfth Night” to a friend soon after I received it. Never got it back. Almost twenty years later, my kids are saying “Daddy, you look weird. And why are talking so funny?” Congrats on leaving lasting wonderful impressions on your old students!–Greg

November 23 2009: What fun! Good to hear from you. Patty

November 23 2009: Participating in the English 510 Players Production of “Measure for Measure” was one of the highlights from my Cal Poly years. I’m sure I’ll cringe as I watch my performance but what an awesome experience it was. Thank you, Dr. Marx! –Candice

November 21 2009: This is great! Thanks for doing this Steven.  We’ll give you a call for lunch next time we’re down–we had a really good time with you guys last time. Take care. –Craig

Day 8

Cameron and the Brits headed downstream while we washed the canoes and obeyed Steve’s strict instructions for cleaning up the campground.  He struck it rich by finding a pair of provocative ladies’ panties.  Horst showed up with the trailer.  He came here 40 years ago from Germany to hunt moose and never went back.  On the road to Whitehorse we got out to look at a roadkilled porcupine, slight compensation for the absence of bear, wolf and moose along the river. We stopped in Braeburn, a coffee shop on the Alaska highway to share some impressive Cinnamon Rolls and arrived in Whitehorse, where we found the previous day’s newspaper’s official version of Russell’s story.

We were joined at dinner in the Hotel Restaurant by Andy’s friends and associates–Chad, an environmental consultant and Mary Ann, professor and researcher in paleolimnology, the study of lake bottom sediments and fossils that encode the north’s environmental history.  Jonah and Monica also returned to hear about our adventures and share more of theirs.  Some of the men stayed in the bar till closing learning local lore from a reliable informant with some regrets in the morning.  Others retired early to enjoy clean sheets, good books and prospects of returning home.

Day 7

The fog was thick during breakfast at the Little Salmon campsite. The roar of trucks on the Campbell Highway that converged here with opposite bank of the river gave notice of our excursion’s approaching end. Our original plan to spend one more night in the wild was abandoned in favor of staying over at the Coal Mine Campground in Carmacks, our planned pickup point the next day. We couldn’t travel the river in fog and it was lifting later today than yesterday. It could strand us tomorrow.

A second shot of Murray’s coffee and his pome cleared the air for the last lazy cruise.  The aspens were turning from yellow to gold.  Fish were biting.  On a gravel bar at lunch, the men aimed rocks at a figurine erected by Steve. Early arrivals at the Coal Mine campground got to clean up and ride into town for beer to bring back, and heard the news that Russell’s associate had been found dead in the bush after an extensive search involving boats, land parties and helicopters.  Andy and Murray brought more fish caught in eddies and at beaverdams.  Cameron and the two Brits showed up and joined our campfire for more Robert Service readings.  Ian presented them with the collection he’d bought second hand.

Day 8

To view a complete set of photos for this trip go here.
To view a slideshow of these photos go here.

Day 6

A quarter moon and Venus lit the dawn, which arrived 45 minutes later this morning than the day we started. Allan, a.k.a. “Soaring Eagle,” was the day’s leader. We crawled out of the tents greeted by a heavy frost, another sign that the northern winter was on its way. A ribbon of fog spread from the cold river over the warming land and then burned off revealing a cloudless sky. The powers above were smiling on our soon-to-be-terminated voyage. The current had reached a steady 10 km/hr making paddling optional, except where multiple channels around gravel bars and islands required selection and vigorous effort.  Reflecting on the ability of the river to move us as it wanted while we struggled to find the right direction and on yesterday’s experience of choice and circumstance, Steve and I debated determinism and free will. In other canoes Andy theorized about neurological analogies between gambling and angling addictions while John and Murray caught more fish.

On the lookout for a suitable spot to stop for lunch, we rounded a turn and spotted a curious sight on a distant low island: what looked like an old-fashioned wall tent standing off kilter on the shore and people at a campfire.  Steve said, “Looks like hunters, lets not go there,” but then we saw Allan and John’s canoes pulled up on the beach.  As soon as we landed, our old friend Cameron came over and introduced a young fellow with long curly hair and a leather hat as “a film maker.”  We walked with them toward the fire and discovered that the tent was pitched on fresh cut spruce poles and mounted on a large raft also completely constructed of poles. Alan and Rob were conversing with a striking young woman wearing dreadlocks gathered in a loose bun who offered us tea and muffins with a radiant smile.  I could only smile back and stare goggle-eyed as she explained that she was with a group who had built the raft several days before out of 130 poles they cut at the northern end of Lake LaBarge where they too were delayed by the storm. Afterward they’d floated it down the river, having spent a whole night on the water trying to find a place to land where they could maneuver out of the current.

Two other men stood at the fire drinking tea, neither looking much like a voyageur, and when they spoke, out came the broadest Cockney accents I’ve heard since watching a Mike Leigh movie.  They had seen a story about going down this river in a book about 20 Great Things To Do Before You Die and had taken a couple of weeks off from their business in London ferrying drunk teenagers from pub to pub in a minibus.  They’d never canoed or kayaked before and were having the time of their lives.

It was hard for me to take my eyes off the woman with the tea, but my attention was drawn by the sound of Ian flopping in the water off the gangplank leading to the raft.  I wandered over and went aboard to overhear a man who looked like a model exquisitely garbed in wool and corduroy explaining to John with a thick French accent that he and his partner, professional guides, were making a promotional film about a new sport of recreating the old prospector’s experience of building rafts and floating them down the river, the project financed by a Swiss bank. They had rented two canoes from “Up North Adventures,” carried their baggage and towed two large logs and six plastic barrels up the lake, and then used hand tools to build the raft.

Against the pile of baggage on the large deck leaned expensive cases for a rifle and a guitar. Too shy to address questions in the presence of all this competence, youth and beauty, I asked John how the girl got here and he said the guides had put an invitation in the Whitehorse newspaper classifieds and that she responded. Her name was Victoria.  She’d left New Zealand on her post-highschool travel sabbatical twelve years ago and was still on the road.

Back at the fire, Victoria was joined by another lovely woman from the south of France.  She was talking to Lionel and Allan about having encountered Russell a couple of days before and not knowing what to make of him. We shared our story and I flashed on my adventure in the south of France 47 years ago, centered in a tiny village called Grimaud.  She said she knew the place.

Our group reassembled at our landing spot for lunch as the last canoe arrived with Murray and Andy, triumphant about having caught four grayling and also puzzled by the spectacle on the beach.  I urged Murray to give the ladies an offering of fish, but hearing our giggles at his approach, he returned too embarrassed to proceed and instead targeted me with a Monte Python fish slap.

After lunch Murray, Andy and I went skinny dipping in the cold Yukon river a discrete enough distance from the young folk to limit our exposure and still show off. Once we were dressed again and about to get  back into our canoes, the two women wished us farewell as they walked down the beach carrying machetes, presumably to cut more poles in the bush.

Our intended campsite for the night was already occupied by a couple with a dog so we decided to spare them our company and take the next one downstream indicated in the guide, but it couldnt be found. While Murray and Andy stayed behind to catch more fish, the rest decided to carve out a new campsite on a small muddy spit at the end of an island since night was approaching. When the fishermen arrived and saw it, they convinced us to keep going another hour to the Little Salmon River where we found an established spot that all agreed was a better choice. Three speedboats passed close to the canoes just before dusk–other than the RCMP’s the first motors we heard in a week. “Don’t F—With Me” Steve was appointed next day’s leader.

Day 7

To view a complete set of photos for this trip go here.

To view a slideshow of these photos go here.