Andesen's Split Pea Soup Restaurant

 

For several years after our Uncle Lloyd died, my sister Ann and I would drive our Aunt Jean to the San Juaquin Valley National Cemetery near Santa Nella, CA, on Memorial Day weekend.  (A few times it was just me when Ann could not make it).  Aunt Jean wanted to attend the memorial services conducted by the VA each year because her husband had been buried there in 2008, while her son, our cousin Doug, was buried there, five years earlier, in 2003.  Both had died of cancer, and both were military veterans, Lloyd in the Army in WWII, and Doug in the Air Force in the 1960's (he was stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska after training at Lackland and did not have to serve in Vietnam).

Doug chose that particular VA cemetery primarily because it was such a beautiful location but also because the VA cemetery close by his parents' home in Fairfield, CA, had not yet been created.  

I had attended the funeral services of both Lloyd and Doug, but their internment in the Valley cemetery did not occur for several more days after.  I would have to fly home to Colorado rather than remain in Northern California for the better part of a week.

It was only during our first drive, taking Aunt Jean to the Valley cemetery, likely in 2009 or 2010, that I got to see the grave sites of Doug and Lloyd.  Aunt Jean would always prepare these green plastic cones with metal spikes to leave artificial flowers and small American flags at the headstones of each of them.  

                                                                    

She would also place a small flag at each of the headstones of a few other men and women whom she and Lloyd were friends with, those who were also veterans or married to veterans of Lloyd's old WWII Army unit, the 101st Airborne.  Each year we'd have to track those other headstones down because they were not as easy to find among so many regular graves, or those whose ash-filled urns had been interred when they decided to be cremated instead.  

Volunteers would often have placed flags at the headstones of many veterans who likely had no more living relatives to honor them, or whose remaining relatives did not make the trek to this Central Valley site.

The drive from Fairfield to Santa Nella was typically at least two hours, with a rest stop along the way, not far from the intersection of Interstates 5 and 580.  I would wait until we arrived at the cemetery and use the restroom there at the Visitor's Center.

After the Memorial Services below the Visitor's Center, and then the placing of the flowers and flags which Aunt Jean had provided, we'd head up to the large hill above the complex.  Often we'd take photos and admire the view and locate the graves of Lloyd and Doug.  The top photo is of me and Mark on the overlook.  He began to go with us in 2014, after we had been dating for nearly two years.  Ann always got the bed in the main guest room of Aunt Jean's house while Jean put Mark and I into the twin beds in the other room at the top of stairs.  

Mark had immediately been accepted into the family by everyone.  

The first time I attended the services near Santa Nella, it was atypically overcast and sprinkled on us during the ceremonies.  In subsequent years, the staff erected a canopy under which we attendees sat on unfolded metal chairs because it was usually an extremely hot, sunny day in the Central Valley with no cloud in sight.  

Aunt Jean would always require us to sit in the front row as we gazed across the rippling water of the cement pond where the ceremonies were being held, the unit VA flags were being furled and unfurled, and the several dignitaries gave their speeches.  (You could always tell when it was an election year because many more local politicians were present, to use the solemn occasion to honor the dead with their own prepared speeches.  "Freedom is not free." managed to make its way into most of their cliche-burdened orations.  The services tended to drag at that point as local politician after local politician chimed in, to remind voters who they were.)  

Being forced to sit for an extended time in that front row, while my head, arms and torso would remain out of the intense sunlight, my bare legs were often sunburned at the end no matter how much lotion I slathered on them.

There was always the welcome acknowledgement of those of us veterans who had also served but were still among the living.  We would be asked to stand as our specific branch of service was called out.  Mark had been in the Navy while I had, of course, been in the Air Force.  I would still proudly stand when we Air Force vets were called upon, remembering the humiliation of 1979 all over again but standing defiantly all these years later.  

Aunt Jean had been an Army nurse stationed in Palm Springs where she met a wounded vet named Lloyd Green late in the war.  She soon got pregnant with Doug and was mustered out.  She and Lloyd were married in 1947 and spent time back in Oklahoma where Lloyd was born and raised, as well as in Texas, before they decided to permanently move to Northern California.   

On the overlook, when we were done taking pictures and admiring the view as the massive American flag waved above us in the inevitable breeze, we would get back into Aunt Jean's Buick and drive to the Andersen's Split Pea Soup Restaurant on the opposite side of the freeway from the cemetery.  It was often crowded from the many who had attended the services at the cemetery earlier, but we usually never had to wait long.  The lobby always had plenty of distractions with post cards and nick knacks and pastries under glass.

Except for one year when Andersen's was way too crowded and we ate at the local Denny's, and other year when Ann was not with us, but Lloyd's youngest brother and his wife were visiting and wanted to see his brother's grave, we ate at Andersen's.  It was a ritual we valued because, after the long drive and the ceremonies, we were hungry and the food was always good.  This gave us the time to chat with Aunt Jean and one another and unwind.  To this day I remember the tables we sat at and what I ordered.  

Aunt Jean died on March 13, 2017, at the age of 94.  Mark and I had driven her to the cemetery the year before and eaten with her at Andersen's, but now those yearly visits were no longer required.  However, Mark, Ann and I drove up the Central Valley on Memorial weekend, to pay our final respects.  As we passed by the site of Andersen's Pea Soup restaurant, we were saddened to see that it was closed and abandoned, much like the photo below.

                                                                              

I have a memory of Mark and I sitting across from one another in a booth at Andersen's.  Aunt Jean had died and I knew that we would never spend another meal with her there ever again.  I gazed across the room at a table where we had sat together for a meal there some years before and became choked up.  It was one of those times when a person becomes so brutally aware of the passage of time and of our mortality.  

I believe that Ann had acquired the two flags that we placed on the familiar headstone that now included our favorite aunt whom we missed so terribly.

                                                                            

Here are Ann and Mark as we three trudged toward Doug's grave.

                                                                               

Later that day we drove on toward Vallejo, to take the ferry as we had once done with Aunt Jean, to San Francisco.  

We have not been back to the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery near Santa Nella since.  It may only be a couple of hours drive from Fairfield, but it's many more, long, tedious driving hours from Indio, CA.  I have no way to know for sure, but Uncle Lloyd's brother "Skeet" and his wife have likely passed on.  His older brother passed a few years after Lloyd.  Doug's two boys never went with Aunt Jean and us to the cemetery, and they had become estranged from her after Lloyd died.  The house in Fairfield was sold soon after she died, and she had had an estate sale after she moved into an assisted living complex not far away.  I bought her set of China, as well as was given her ceramic Christmas tree and glass pumpkin candy container that I always admired.  Other family members either bought or were given the rest of her and Lloyd's more memorable possessions, now scattered to the winds.     

I read the other day, when I swiped that photo of the abandoned Andersen's, that the building will soon be demolished.  I became profoundly saddened all over again.  

    

 

 

5th Annual QCon Saturday, 20 June, Plummer Park, West Hollywood

                                                                       

                                                                                  

                                                                                 

Mark and I bought an electric vehicle, a VW ID-4, considered used even though it only had 53 miles on it since it was being used as a display for VW since it was built in 2021.  The price was too good to be true, so we traded in our Tiguan.  Knowing that the space-age Tesla Diner was built in West Hollywood, along Santa Monica Blvd, we knew, with an adapter, we could recharge the vehicle there while having breakfast as we waited. 

Above are photos I took as we waited for the ID-4 to recharge, which did not take that long.

The food was fine, breakfast tacos and Avocado toast.  Mark had his usual Latte while I had a purple lemonade.  In the parking lot, at the main and secondary charging lots,  Teslas were everywhere.  We were the lone non-Tesla there.   The entire experience felt like Tomorrowland at Disneyland.  

We later set up the RAoF table in the main hall.  Here Mark waits for the starting of the convention.

                                                                          

As with WonderCon in late March, Mark and I had a fantastic time, meeting so many interesting attendees.  Sold and gave away so many books yet again.  

First time wearing my hearing aids to QCon.  But the music was fairly loud for most of the day, so I still had trouble hearing some of those we chatted with.  The staff and volunteers were helpful as usual.  Mark and I still savor our award from a few years ago when we came in second in the cosplay contest, wearing FORBIDDEN PLANET uniforms.  

Thanks again to all of those who stopped by to check out the Rainbow Arc of Fire series.  Once more, the entire series is available as digital downloads or print-on-demand copies on amazon.com.  

Elsewhere on my blog are passages from the several novels and information regarding how and why I wrote the series and, of course, many events and instances that impact my life and the lives of all of you who attended QCon.  Our rights are still not secure.  And there are still way too many who cannot seem to tolerate us being ourselves, whatever form or method we choose to take.  And, as anyone who has been to any comic book convention knows, all who cosplay are not necessarily LGBTQ+.  

I hope all who bought or received RAoF novels enjoy the books.  Any who decide to purchase one or more of the novels online from amazon also enjoy my humble efforts.  

I tried with every new addition to the series to try something different with, primarily, the same cast of characters.  Whether I failed or succeeded, that's entirely up to the reader.  I tried only to be true to the characters and their missions as their varied adventures emerged.    

.  

QCon 2026 in West Hollywood this Saturday 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM

 Rainbow Arc of Fire will have our table in the same location as the past four years.  In the immediate right-hand corner of the main hall.

This will be our fifth year at QCon.  (We were there at the inaugural convention.)  

                                                                              

Mike and I

We sat, one behind the other, in Ivan Evans's English class in the 9th grade at South Gate Junior High School in the Spring of 1964.  Mike remembers that our teacher somehow thought that I was from Cuba.  Mike thought that was interesting.  Perhaps it was my Hispanic last name or that I was born in Florida.  However, Mike and I did not become either familiar or friendly in junior high.

When I started high school, I found myself standing outside of the gym building with Richard Meyers, someone I did not previously know.  We chatted even though we both were likely supposed to be inside the gym, attending a mandatory gym class.  Richard was very soon able to enroll in the Corrective Gym class.  That class was designed for those who were not physically gifted, fit or hunky.  In short, geeky guys.  The instructor, Mr. Self, would make his students use free weights and rope climbs and whatever else it would take to build up the muscles and frames of the skinny guys, or take weight off of the fat guys, and make them all look more fit.  Each of his students typically got an "A". 

I was only able to join Corrective Gyn at a later date, having to put up with regular gym class for several months.  

But my encounter with Richard Meyers that morning led me to his small circle of friends which included Mike Mebs and Richard Wright.  They would gather at lunch and talk.  I was soon part of that trio.  We thought many of our fellow students were Neanderthals, that seemed to be one of the major reasons we hung out together.  What many of our fellow students thought of us, if they gave us any thought at all, we did not really care?  Many of them were joiners and participators.  We were not.  

One Saturday, Mike invited me over to his house.  I am not exactly sure what we did that day, but as he lived on Washington St., on the eastern end of South Gate, and I lived over on Cypress, on the western end of town, it was an effort to get back and forth.  I might have walked all of the way--I was quite a walker in those days.  Or I could have taken the bus.

Richard Meyers might have been the leader of our small band, but he was never the kind of friend to invite any of us over to his house in the un-incorporated area of Cudahy, immediately north of South Gate where he, his mother, his grandmother and his dog, Ginger, lived.  (He actually lived much closer to me than Mike did, but it was made clear from early on that the rest of us were never going to be invited over to his house.  So, Mike and I became those kinds of friends.)

We went on our Grad Night to Disneyland together.  Mike took my sister.  I took a friend of hers.  We attended East LA Junior College together, though not always in all of the same classes.  We similarly transferred to Cal State Dominguez Hills, graduating at the same time in December of 1971.  He worked in a sock warehouse in downtown LA for Lily Butler during college.  I worked in a wallpaper warehouse on the edge of LA, off of Santa Fe and under the shadow of the Santa Monica Freeway.

With the money we earned working full time in summers and part time during the school years, we eventually made our car payments, and paid for gas and sometimes food while still living at home, took airline flights out of LAX, primarily to San Diego because it was cheaper, and took a couple of flights to San Francisco where we hiked all over the city, and then across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, finally ending up at the Downtown Airline Terminal for the bus ride back to the airport. 

I was his best man when he married Lida whom we both met at East LA.  He had two kids with Lida.  And then my mom and I visited them in Tucson, AZ, where he was attending college at the U of A.  It had been many months earlier that Mike finally realized that, like me, he was gay.  During one evening of our visit, Mom made some random, fateful, stupid comment to Lida when Mike and I went out one evening to the effect that, "I hope he [me] doesn't make Mike take him to some gay bar."  A light came on in Lida's head when she awakened to the fact that her husband just might be gay.  They would eventually divorce.  We still talk about how clueless Mom was to say something like that.

I met Mike's first partner, Walt, who would eventually die of AIDS in 1995 before the cocktails would become widely available.  I eventually met his current partner, Alex, years ago.  

It's safe to say that we have travelled a long path together as friends.  From our early teen years to old age, our friendship has persevered.   

Now, unfortunately, our frailties and ages are catching up to us.  Mike is one month younger than I, born in October of 1949.  I have a younger sister while he has a younger sister and brother, but we are both now 76, going on 77 soon enough. 

We share diverticulosis and diverticulitis, acid reflux, prostate issues--he now has been told he has prostate cancer.  We've both had hernia surgery, him in college and me double hernia surgery in the late 1990's.

While we both supported Richard Nixon for President in 1968, that ended as soon as we realized he was not going to end the Vietnam War any time soon after he was elected.  His "secret plan" to end the War was Vietnamization, something Lyndon Johnson seemed to be doing toward the end of his doomed presidency.

It was soon that Mike's path and mine diverged because of Nixon's draft lottery.  I got 119; but Mike was 325, way too high to be concerned about the draft.  I eventually went off to the Marine Corps' OCS in 1972, and then the Air Force's OTS in 1973, while he graduated from a Teacher Certification program at the U of A in the 1980's, divorced Lida, met Walt, and I helped the two of them move to Southern California, into an apartment building at the eastern edge of South Gate, not far from his parent's house where he grew up.

We now hope merely to outlive the selfish, egotistical monster in the White House and experience peaceful deaths.  With so many ailments, who knows what will eventually carry us off?  We talk about the past, the '60's, our shared experiences from the past and the present.  (He and Alex once lived in the same desert community in CA that Mark and I moved to, where my sister also lives; but then his daughter and son-in-law talked him into moving to Phoenix to be near them, and we only spent about a year living nearby one another as we had in the 1960's.)   

We yell a lot on the phone and bemoan the state of the nation at least weekly.  Soon after we were born, the Korean War began which neither of us remembers in our separate childhoods.  The Cold War endured for most of our youth, hence the military draft and the Vietnam War.  Then we experienced the Reagan adventures abroad, Bush Sr.'s Gulf War, Bush Jr.'s Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, now this useless Iran War.  We have experienced idealized versions of the 1950's and 1960's in the distant.  Our high school was so peacefully integrated that it seemed almost to go unnoticed.

All of our grandparents died long ago.  Then the parents and uncles and aunts departed the stage.  Waves of our television, music and movie idols have passed on and more continue to do so.  We have no idea how long each of us has.  Which one will outlive the other, or will we go at relatively the same age?  In five years?  Ten?  Longer than that?  His mother died at 94.  My maternal Aunt Jean and Grandpa Sanchez died at 94.  

Both now retired, we live day to day.  

  

Ralph Story's A.M. February 1971, and beyond

I would graduate from Cal State Dominguez Hills in December of 1971.  I was still working at A.U. Morse & Company near downtown L.A.  Even before graduation, I would have to decide what to do with my life.  But at the same time, I had to deal with mandatory military service.  My draft lottery number was 119, and I was only exempt for a short time before I graduated from college.

Before graduation, in the Fall of 1971, I did enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve, to begin with training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego after graduation.  That would keep me out of service until I left college.  (I would normally have graduated in June of 1971; but two course I took at East L.A. Junior College worth 8 units did not count and I had to take additional classes to get enough units to get my degree.)

I met Mark Lombardo that fall who had returned from Marine OCS in the summer of 1971, to graduate in December and then serve as a Marine officer.  He talked me into switching from the Marine Corps Reserve to OCS in the Spring of 1972.  Marine combat units had been withdrawn from Vietnam in 1971.  By becoming a member of the Marine Corps, I would not have to serve in that costly and, ultimately, futile war.  Those I had met in college such as Daylin Butler,rimarily at East L.A., and Pay Byrne at Dominguez Hills advised that I not serve in Vietnam, both of whom had been in Vietnam with the Marines as enlistedmen.  It would be a waste of my life for no appreciable reason to go to Vietnam. 

When I was able, I would watch Ralph Story's A.M. in the mornings before classes at Dominguez Hills.  Host Ralph Story, a TV legend in LA, and his co-host Stephanie Edwards conducted a wide range of features and guests.  Authors with new books to peddle or devices such as the Velobind process of self-publishing or recipes for healthy food choices were offered each morning.  When I was fired from A.U. Morse and got a job as a security guard, I would definitely be able to watch the show in the mornings. 

All of these years later, I watch Morning Joe that offers heavy doses of politics but also other choices such as new books to buy and read.  

In 1971-3, I was making career decisions, impacted heavily by the looming military draft.  Had I not had to worry about the Vietnam War and being drafted by the Army, I might have had the freedom to think of different career directions.  Perhaps I could have remained in college, gotten a Master's Degree, graduated and found a job teaching at a community college.  I never would have attended Marine OCS or Ai Force OTS, been stationed at Minot AFB and the Air Force Academy.  Never would have moved to North Dakota or Colorado.  (After I returned from OCS, I did apply to TWA and Continental Airlines when men could then be hired as flight attendants, but I was rejected by both.)  

Now I am back, living in California after so many years away.  I'm retired, yet attempting to figure out what to do with however many years I have remaining.  I have applied to teach at our local community college but have been rejected both times.

Recurring Dream

I periodically experience a recurring dream, with variations.  I am back inside the former IBM site outside of Boulder, CO, on the Diagonal Highway.  It's time to leavefor the day, but I cannot find my way out.  No matter which direction I walk, I am unable to leave the building. 

This time, I cannot find my wallet or car keys.  After walking down stairs and finding an exit in the basement, I am able to exit the building this time but know that I have no keys (which is odd because, if I did not have them in the first place, how was I able to drive to work at the IBM site).  And, once out of the building, I also cannot find my car in the relatively empty lot.  Obviously, without car keys, how could I start my car if I fdid ind it and drive home?

I believe I may have had similar dreams, years ago, when I was forced to resign from the Air Force.  This is quite similar.  I did not want to go, hence I cannot leave.  Of course, financially this whole situation is troubling because I am poorly off monetarily because I did not have a retirement to deal with my force resignation.  In 1979 (with the Air Force) and 2023 (with IBM).

Q-Con West Hollywood June 20, 2026, 11 AM - 6 PM

                                                                                  

Prism Comics is pleased to announce their 5th Annual Q CON LGBTQIA+ COMIC CONVENTION celebrating LGBTQIA+ comic books, graphic novels and cosplay pride! 

Q CON LGBTQIA+ COMIC CONVENTION

Saturday, June 20, 2026

11 am - 6 pm

Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park

7377 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

Free admission

Family friendly

We’re thrilled to have a fabulous lineup of over 100 creators, cosplayers and talented performers including Richard Fairgray (Four-Color Heroes), Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer, Opting Out), Lee Knox Ostertag (The Witch Boy, The Deep Dark), Joe Phillips (animator, illustrator), ND Stevenson (Nimona, Scarlet Morning), Jen Wang (The Prince and the Dressmaker, Ash’s Cabin), Nicole Maines (Suicide Squad, Supergirl), Rex Ogle (Fruitcake, Dan of Green Gables), Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), Josh Trujillo (Washington’s Gay General), Shannon Watters (Hollow, Lumberjanes), Jim McCann (The Other/Half), Kendra Wells (Real Hero Sh*t), Sonya Saturday (J.K. Rowling and the Ungrateful Fans), Sam Irvin (Captain Samouflage and the Frankensam Scam!), Qweerty Gamers, Jasmine Walls (Brooms) and many more. There will also be a cosplay contest, panel presentations, and portfolio review for aspiring comics creators.

Q Con is free and family friendly for all ages.

Register for free tickets - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/q-con-2026-southern-californias-only-lgbtqia-comic-convention-tickets-1980431535033

Or get free tickets at the door

Prism Comics thanks our sponsors for their generous support – Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, The City of West Hollywood, Modern Fanatic, Oni Press, Los Angeles Film School, IDW Comics & Entertainment and Top Shelf.

WonderCon 2026 March 27-29

 

For no obvious reason, our table was now on the second row back, one section over from where we were placed for the past three years straight.  (We even had a couple people stop by and say that they thought we were not here this year when they did not see us in our usual space.)  We did not get the traffic we previously got, but we actually sold more books than the past few years.

The staff allowed us early arrivers to pull into the hall itself to unload our vehicles and set up our tables (above).  Here is Mark, standing proudly before our new VW ID-4.  It was technically a used vehicle from 2021; however, it had but 53 miles on it when we bought it just a few days before and paid less than half what a new ID-4 cost  This was our first long trip.  We decided on the second day to Valet park it because they would charge it while they kept it.  They might have tried to charge it, but when the Con was over and we loaded it up for the drive back home, iD-4 was only at the same charge as it was when we turned it over to them.  I wanted to get out of town, so we took off without complaining and stopped East of Riverside to recharge at a Wallmart station. 

                                                                               

The ride was smooth both ways, and we fell in love with the vehicle, especially since Trump's Iran war caused the price of gas to skyrocket.  It was a new feeling to not even think about stopping for gas at a gas station.

                                                                                   

Here was one view from behind our table.  But the direct line points to the fellow from Arizona who had the table beside us for the previous three years.  
                                                                                   

We had a fellow and a female friend stop by the table.  They had created a 3D film that was a send up of those from the 1950's called SCORPIAN.  They took our picture, but Mark has a terrible time with flash photos and always closes his eyes.  I thought this was a good photo of me, so I am posting it here.

The following is a much better photo of Mark, on our second day.
                                                                                

The following is a photo of a fellow who I corralled the first day of the Con because he was wearing a FORBIDDEN PLANET uniform.  He took a photo of us which I have yet to find.  But here he is wearing a Captain America WWII uniform.  He bought all of the books in the series except, of course, the two we give away for free.

                                                                                 

Another woman bought three books in the series and also ot the other two free volumes.  Another young fellow showed up with a copy of Volume 6 in the series which he said was given to him by his Grandmother who must have collected the whole series when I was giving the first eight away at the Palm Springs Comic Con years before.  He bought the last two volumes in the series. 

 Hilton had remodeled the main restaurant which we did not enjoy and only had our first breakfast there.  Their Market Place was way over priced.  We were also given a room on the 5th floor, which seemed to be the party floor for drunks.  Never again.  We had no view out the window.  Mark got cornered near the parking garage and almost forced to give the three large men who surrounded him $25.  They tried to steal credit card info to charge even more but Mark was quick to pull his wallet back in time.  He reported his situation to the Heoel staff because he was not the only person so scammed.  

Otherwise, we had an enjoyable Con, meeting new folks and again seeing those we have known from before.  Next will be Q Con in June in West Hollywood.  

Eclipse

Chapter One

We were weakened by all of the hatred, as if like the sun's rays during an eclipse. 

While we tried to fight back, not fully knowing what sort of  threat we faced, not from the stars or other planets but from our own backyards, our abilities were dimmed by degrees.  Soon they were all but gone.

The Gods and Goddesses faded into seclusion, as they have done in the past.

 

Solitaire & Songs from long ago

Mark is sound asleep at the other end of the house.  Our seven rescue cats are scattered about, also sleeping soundly in their comforting places.  

I sit at my failing desk-top computer,.playing Greenfelt solitaire, with Youtube cycling on another tab, remembering the several broken and mended pieces of my distant past, places and people who come to life and reopen an individual space in my memory..

Often but not always I have my relatively new hearing aids in place for greater clarity, revealing notes and tones in each segment of recollection that I had once anticipated before age and loud noises robbed me of certain highs and ranges.  (I am almost certain a specific B-52's concert to the South of Denver was the culprit in giving me this constant ringing that the hearing aids somewhat mask.)

I mostly type now with one hand, the laft still unrecovered from the break in September that hours of recent therapy have not yet restored.  Just another infirmity that time has added to the acid reflux, the diverticulosos, the treated skin cancer, ED, the hearing loss, the left knee that infrequently reminds of the steep ski slope of the Pike's Peak Resort when Gary and his two buddies left me to make my own way down to the lodge.

We make do with what we have left, as Beethoven continued to compose though he was totally deaf.    

"Help Me" by Joni Mitchell.  1974.

I am in one of the Air Force's old WWII-era barracks at Vandenberg AFB.  I'd spent the previous couple of months at Minot before my missile training slot opened up.  A buddy and I had driven my 1973 Chevy Camero to The Warehouse, a retail location for audio equipment several miles north of the base,  We'd removed the back seat earlier in the day for more room to pack in eight Advent speakers, four for each of us  We did not want to make two trips.

We were going to need to keep the boxes to ship them to our respective missile bases.  He might have been headed to Whiteman AFB.  I had not used my free Air Force household goods.shipment yet.  I had already hauled my cases of books and record albums my mom's rental house in San Pedro to my Bachelor Officer's Quarters (BOQ) room so most of my wordly possessions would ship from Vandenberg to Minot.  The rest would fit into the Camero for the drive to Minot (I had flown to Minot on January 3rd, 1974, leaving the Camero behind with mom.) 

Despite the incredibly tight fit, the two of us had gotten all eight Advent speakers in their boxes into the Camero and back to Vandenberg.  

I don't recall if I had unpaced all four speakers or just two to connect to a used Marantz receiver, to see how they sounded.  I had already bought a recommended turntable, based on a review from THE ABSOLUTE SOUND audio magazine.  As with much else in that era, the offered an alternative impressions to the mainstream publications such as STEREO REVIEW.              
 

I had dug through the boxes of albums to find Mitchell's COURT AND SPARK.  "Help Me" seemed to be a pleasantly sonic challenge to test drive the Advents.  I was not disappointed.    

 "Making Love" by Roberta Flack.  1982.

This was an entirely different time and place.  I had been out of the service for several years. still living in my house in Colorado Springs.  Lindsey Barton "Bart" Keeling was my friend.  We must have seen the film MAKING LOVE at a local theater.  I was at the local INDEPENDENT RECORDS store and bought each of us a copy of the 45rpm theme. 

By the end of the decade, Bart had moved to Palm Springs.  He'd been a good friend whom I missed.  I was able to visit him only once.  A few years later, a mutual friend told me outside the gym on Colorado Blvd. in Denver where I was then living that Bart had decided to stop taking his HIV meds, quickly deteriorated, and died that January of 2003.  

We'd only hooked up once when we first met, rather awkwardly.  We became good friends instead.  The lines have always reminded me of Bart, "And I'll remember you...."  I cannot here the song without being reminded of someone whose frienship helped me to cope with being alone and out of the service.  

"Lotta Love" Nicolette Larson.  1978-9

This song always reminds me of my year and a half at the Air Force Academy.  Bright, breezy, assertive yet poignant.  The most wonderful time in my life until I met Mark.  But unlike then, it collapsed into thr worst time in my life, one when I alost did not want to servive.  When your most beloved career is crushed by betrayal and deceit, you never entirely recover.

"Make It With You" Bread.  1970.

Of all of the driving-to-San-Diego  songs from the Summer of 1970, this is the one that stands out the most.  I cannot help but think of those years when Mike and I were young and in college and not quite on the verge of being drafted.     

"No Night So Long" Dionne Warwick.  1980.

  

WonderCon 2026

Rainbow Arc of Fire returns for a fifth time to WonderCon in 2026. 

Our first year we were situated along a wall, just down from one of the food courts in 2022:

                                     

For the next three years, 2023-2025, we had a commanding location with a huge open space before us.  We could see, and be seen, from many directions a long way off.

                                                                                   

But next year, we will be tucked away instead.  SP-53 is a couple of aisles over to the left and back a few rows.  We won't have anyone next to us, but we won't have the visibility we have had for three years.  However, sales have been poor the last two years, so perhaps a new location might change things up a bit.
                                                                              
We simply enjoy attending and having a presence at WonderCon, no matter what happens.

 

The Past Keeps Rolling Past III

I had another dream of Denver this morning.  This time it was about playing volleyball in Cheesman Park.  Of course, none of the people in the dream were those I knew back then.  However, when I woke up, I remembered so many of them:  Brian Johnson, Tommy Hill, Jack Witt, Bill Smith, Chris, Terry, and dozens whom I remember their many faces but forget their names.    

Not long after Mark and I moved to California, I heard from Brian Johnson that Bill Smith had moved to Texas and had died.  He was the first volleyball buddy whom I remember telling in "Queen Soopers" that I had a boyfriend. 

I had started to play volleyball soon after I moved into the Park Humboldt Apartments on Humboldt Street, one block over from Cheesman.  One of the reasons I started to play was to meet someone since so many gay guys did play on the weekends especially.  From my early 40's until I just after I turned 60, I showed up early each weekend, sat under the tree by the 9th Street entrance and read a book until others showed up. 

I soon cobbled together the nearly $200 to buy the red-bagged volleyball net and ropes and poles.  A local company on the other side of I-25 from downtown sold them.  When I finally gave up playing, I handed my set to Bill Smith whom I knew would use it well. 

In the few years after I gave up playing, and soon met Mark, when I drove through Cheesman Park, I would see the latest generation of players who had taken over from us much older players who had finally moved on.  Tommy Hill, and then Jack Witt, who were a few years older than I, quit playing before I did.  I knew that eventually I would have to make the same decision, an acknowledgement that I was old, too old to endure potential injuries that might not heal quickly.                 

The past keeps rolling past II

College of the Desert had three English Department job openings several weeks ago.  I applied once again and, once again, I was rejected with the neutral phrase, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time."   They once more suggested that I keep checking with their site for additional openings. 

I am not certain anything would change when I suspect that my age is what they really believe bars me from their consideration.  I feel I am wasting my time and efforts to keep applying.  Filling out their many online forms takes so much time.  

While I am slowly recovering from my broken, this latest rejection was just one more disappointment.  

So, I continue to watch M*A*S*H episodes, like cuddling with a favorite and familiar stuffed animal as a child.  Once BJ and Col. Potter so easily settled in, and then Winchester replaced Burns, the series truly soared for me.  Except that Radar did not appear in several episodes without explanation until Season 7 I M*A*S*H actors who are still alive.

In a Christmas episode, at the end, the camera poignantly panned across Stiers, Morgan, Burghoff, Christopher, and Swit, certainly not knowing that in November of 2025, those actors would be gone. 

Of course, their fates remind me of my own mortality.  Especially with my recovering hand and wrist.

I feel broken.  Finding it difficult to see myself back to the person I once was, fully functioning except for the normal frailties of age.  

 Having watched the two-part episode of M*A*S*H when Gart Burghoff's character of Radar left the series, I realized that the final episode (#5 of Season 8), it was broadcast on Monday, October 15, 1979, my first workday that I was no longer in the Air Force.  I forced myself to drive to the unemployment office in Colorado Springs, step inside the front door, and stand inside the noisy lobby until I gathered enough courage to approach one of the clerks to apply for insurance.  (Since the AF was required to give me $10K severance pay, I would not be able to collect any money for a few months.  But I was able to meet with a rep who would try for months to find me a job.)

I clearly must have identified with Radar who stood alone outside while everyone else had rushed to the OR to attend to the wounded.  The Friday before, I had spent the morning taking my possessions to my car.  At one point I was stuck between floors in the main elevator, waiting to be rescued, believing that even the building itself did not want me to go. 

I closed out my account at the Academy Officer's Club and headed home.  I looked at myself in the hall bathroom mirror as I took off mt Air Force uniform for the last time.  My neighbor Gina Martin and her mom took me to Black Angus on Academy Blvd. for dinner that night and then my career was over.  On Monday night Radar's Army career was over.     

The past just keeps rolling past

Nearly three weeks ago, I broke my wrist.  I've never broken any bones previously, so this is an entirely new experience for me.  Everyone wants to know how it happened since I am now 76 years old and I suspect they wonder if it was age-related (as I am now forced to type with one hand).

We have 3 or more outdoor stray cats we feed.  Two black cats that Mark named Buster and Benny.  And a white and gray cat we were told long ago is named Max.  (He's been around the neighborhood for years, having once lived near the golf course but then migrated toward our corner of the community.  Another woman also has fed and cared for him, too.  But she stopped by a few days ago to see about Max and explained that she has not seen Max for some time now.  I assured her that he was fine, but he figured prominently in my wounded situation as I held up my second, smaller and lighter cast.)

Max had showed on our front porch in the afternoon, Tuesday September 30th, looking for food.  I had just put up our porch Halloween decorations for the holiday.  
                                                                                 

I went inside to get him some dry food.  When I returned, he was gone.  I figured he'd gone around to the front of the house, so I headed to the driveway.  There, I still did not see him.  But I started to hear what sounded like the low yowling of an imminent cat fight between Max and, likely, this newly stray gray cat with a long, puffy tail and white paws on the other side of the tall hedge that divides the front of our house from that of our neighbor.  As I moved closer to the hedge, I yelled for the two cats to stop.

I was worried about Max and was distracted.  I failed to look down at the large, sharp-edged, metal cactus planter that a departed neighbor had given to Mark many months ago.  Still looking straight ahead, I was shocked to feel myself suddenly pitching forward in an unexpected and uncontrolled fall.  Only in the slow descent to the ground did I suspect what was happening and why I was falling,

I reactively reached out my left arm to break my sudden plunge forward.  I could feel my arm getting submerged into the hedge.  As my body finally came to wrest on solid ground, with no more forward momentum, I pulled my arm out of the lowest branches, only to discover that my hand and wrist were distorted.  I knew instantly that something important was broken.

One look at the results of the fall caused me to start loudly shrieking.  I awkwardly rose to my feet, holding my left arm up like a useless stump.  I started shrieking because I knew I needed help.  But we live on a quiet street of empty rentals.

I got into the house.  Found my cell flip phone.  With difficulty, I dialed Mark at work.  All I could yell when he answered was, "I broke my wrist!  I BROKE MY WRIST!!  Call Ann to take me to the emergency room!"

I know now I was in shock.  My left leg had two bloody gashes in the front and another scrape on the top of my left foot.  In the Emergency room, Ann filled out the paperwork for me as the staff tried to take my vitals.  My blood pressure, what they could get of it, was incredibly low.

They took X-rays.  Nurses came and went.  Ann took pictures to send to a distraught Mark.  A doctor explained what they were going to do to fix my wrist.  The one positive was that no bones were protruding through skin, so no surgery was needed. 

I was put into a twilight zone by drugs, though my entire right arm was burning when it should have just been the injection site.  That was agony until it stopped.

While I was under, I could still see the ceiling and hear vague voices.  But my perception began to get weird.  I believed I was in some sort of Matrix.  I was being attended to by aliens.  Reality was not real.  When I heard my sister's voice, I knew that she was a part of this vast conspiracy against me.  I was in some cosmic operating room of the damned.  Of course, I also reasoned that I was nobody.  Why was this happening to me?  Who were these aliens and why was I their test subject?

Faces zoomed in on my face and asked me questions.  What was my name?  What year was it?  With lips and brain that barely seemed to function, I mumbled my feeble replies. 

For two weeks I wore the large, heavy, fore-arm cast.  This past Monday the orthopedic doctor at Eisenhower Medical Center had the staff replace it with one less restrictive and lighter.     

Just before the fall, I was already taking antibiotics for a UTI.  And I had an appointment for a biopsy of a splotch on the back of my neck.  I was not in the best of shape to begin with.

I have reverted to my childhood where I cannot tie my own shoelaces.  Cannot type except with one hand.  Have a really tough, or impossible, time opening up cans, jars, packaging.     

In the days immediately after, I kept thinking how unreal it all was.  How, had Max not shown up or not walked away, I would still be fine.  Or had I not allowed myself to be distracted, remembered the planter and looked down for just a moment, it would not have happened.  Sort of like taking out single events that, when combined, lead to the Titanic sinking.

I experienced days of taking antibiotics when Immediate Care contacted me to say that my UTI was drug resistant.  I would soon hear from the dermatologist that the skin issue on my neck was cancerous and needed to be treated. 

In addition to these physical blows to my wellbeing, I got yet another teaching rejection from College of the Desert, even when they had three impending openings in the English Department. 

I have been watching one of my favorite classic TV series on DVD, M*A*S*H (it's not available on hi def Blu-ray discs and streaming costs $19.99 per season, for each of the 11 seasons--too much).  So, I dragged out the DVD discs and started with Season One several weeks ago.       

I am up to Season 5.  While I could appreciate the first 3 seasons, I actually preferred from Season 4 onward when Harry Morgan was introduced as Col. Sherman Potter to replace McLean Stevenson's Henry Blake, and Mike Ferrel as BJ Hunnicut was added to replace Wayne Rogers' Trapper John.    

While I have watched the DVD set several years ago, once I hit Season 4 a week or so ago, I was transported back to my Air Force career and my stationing at Minot AFB when I first saw each episode in the original broadcast.  I was back in my BOQ room, watching M*A*S*H on my RCA 19-inch TV.

The second episode of Season 5 featured a personal favorite, "Fallen Idol", in which Hawkeye feels guilty about Radar being wounded on his way to Seoul.  He gets drunk.  Shows up hungover to operate.  Gets chewed out by Col. Potter.  Gets into a tiff with Radar.  Gets chewed out again by Potter and several others at the 4077th.  As he sits by himself outside post op, newly added Major Winchester sarcastically observes, "Sitting with all your friends, I see."

I had a similar experience near the end of my 742nd tour at Minot.  A deputy of mine and I got into a tiff on alert.  I politely asked him to do something, and he exploded at me.  We yelled at one another for a few brief moments.  In the crew vehicle on the ride back to base, I am not sure which of us brought it up; but I told him he could ask for a crew transfer.  Well, he did.  But who knows what BS he told our new Squadron Commander?  When I was called into the new commander's office, he laid into me.  Even said that if the Air Force Academy knew what I was really like, they would not hire me.  I was appalled.  I had no idea what my former deputy told him.  I was too perplexed to even ask what lies were said about me.  He never even asked to hear my side of the confrontation.     

From that point on, I was a crew commander without a permanent deputy.  I went out with a different one on each alert.  And then my assignment at Minot came to an end after 235 alerts.  Yet I always identified with Hawkeye in that M*A*S*H episode.  You do a great job in a very tough assignment for over four years but when someone spreads BS about you, you finish your tour under a cloud with no idea what had been said about you.

IBM

On wistful nights
every now and then
I dream of IBM.

I am at the Boulder campus
Closed in recent years
but still alive in these dreams.

Often I am attempting to leave
To get back home
wherever that may be.

I intend to reach my car
But the several buildings conspire
to keep me there.

Hallways and walls 
corners and corridors
Become like a shifting maze.

People I meet  
or interact with
are total strangers to me now.

Even then I never knew them.
Workers pass me dutifully
not retired as I often am.

In the latest iteration
the empty halls and cubicles
were a pale and dull green.

The site was being sold
Employees were buying
chunks and pieces as investments.

Against a certain future
where they can sell at a profit.  
I was, however, unconvinced.

Saturday Morning, August 30, 2025

 

Our friend Jane died over the weekend.  When we bought our house in the Spring of 2016, we found a lovely HOME SWEET HOME doormat at our doorstep when we arrived.  Jane had purchased it for us.  It's there still.  The photo above was when she and her husband attended our wedding on our patio.  She was 80 when she died and had been battling cancer for the last few years until her doctor and she determined that there was nothing more that could be done that would prolong her life.

My sister Ann and Jane were in the same class at Western Airlines in the mid 1970's.  That was when they met and have been friends ever since.  When Jane and Tony, her husband, bought a home in this gated community in Indio, Ann would soon buy a home here, as well.  When Mark and I would decide to live here, as well, we already knew Jane and Tony.

Jane's sister officiated at our wedding in 2019, before the Pandemic.  The three daughters and one son were children of an English mother and a U.S. G.I. during WWII.  When the war was over, Jane and her siblings sailed on the Queen Mary to America with their mother, to reunite with their American father.

On the morning that Jane died, we had already scheduled another annual visit to our Step Sister Pam in San Pedro, to take Pam to lunch.  Ann needed the distraction, so we went anyway.  I always drive. 

Pam is about a month older than I.  She has gained considerable weight in the last few decades, and now it's easier for her to get around in a wheelchair rather than use the walker she had been using on our previous visits.

Lorri, our half sister, does use a walker and has for the past year and more.  So Mark and I have to load up her walker when we pick her up elsewhere in Indio.  And then we had to load the heavy wheelchair into the back of the Tiguan after we all used the bathroom in Pam's apartment after the nearly 3-hour drive. 

Pam lives in the same apartment building where Mom used to live from about 1977 until earlier the year she died in 2002.  Pam lives in apartment 610 whereas Mom lived in 1010.  Same side of the building, essentially the same view, though a bit lower.  Mom could see the Southern tip of Catalina Island on a clear day, gazing West from her balcony.  She could also see the cruise ships sailing down the harbor, out to see or in to port, and most especially watch the Christmas boat parade, with all of the vessels of various sizes decorated for the holiday. 

You cannot see the channel anymore from Pam's balcony.  I doubt if you could see it from Mom's old balcony were she still alive and living four flights up.  Mid and high rise buildings now block almost all of the view.  A restaurant on the corner of Harbor Blvd and 5th Street called The Grinder is long gone, replaced by a six-story mid rise with shops on the first floor and condos above.  Ports O' Call Village where Mom would bike to for breakfast in the first several years when she moved to San Pedro after I left for the Air Force in 1973, and was still ambulator is also gone, completely torn down.  (In her last years, Mom also used either a cane or a walker after a bike rider hit and knocked her down, breaking her hip on a sidewalk in Long Beach.)

Mom had a friend who worked at a Chinese-American-owned shop at Ports O' Call called Wings.  Mom was always sad that her friend seemed always to have to work there, even on holidays such as Christmas and only made minimum wage.  Her friend has likely passed on. 

Whenever I visited Southern California while Mom was alive, I usually stayed with her.  We would often go to breakfast at a little restaurant on 5th Street, half a block from Mesa St. that you could see from Mom's balcony.  We would occasionally go to The Grinder for lunch or dinner.  Once in awhile, we might drive to The Acapulco, a Mexican restaurant in Ports O' Call Village.  But, that, and a seafood restaurant, also disappeared when the Village was torn down.

Pam's small, one-bedroom unit has the same floorplan as Mom's former unit.  It's always nostalgic to see Pam's place and be reminded of Mom's apartment.  I spent several 4th of July holidays (Mom's birthday) and Christmas and New Year's staying with her, sleeping on the convertible sofa. 

One year I arrived on Christmas Eve and had to have a pathetic little breakfast in the morning at Jack In the Box because we had not stopped to get anything at a market, not realizing that nothing would be open on Christmas morning.

This time the drive was exhausting as we headed up and down the Harbor Freeway to an Olive Garden in Carson, CA, where Pam wanted to go for lunch.  Ann would later say to me that if Pam is still with us next year, she might just take Lorri, buy some food, and eat at Pam's apartment instead of trying to go out to eat.  I did not give that much thought, for that will be next year, and we have many months to live in between.  

    

Late August

I feel the first caress of Autumn
in the early dark of August days

Late in the month 
before the surety of September

Tentative breezes powder my face
and tap my thinning hair, whitened with age

The desert sun by afternoon may leach
what passes for moisture in the air

But the spring and summer of my arc
have long passed in all but memory 

The approaching ages when my parents died
are as drum beats in a relentless band

And so I do a recital of laundry and dishes
as if in ritual for the very last time

My working husband sincerely thanks me
neither knowing the day I will be missed

What will I do the rest of my life?

I never imagined that I would feel a certain discomfort with retirement.  While I was working, I squirreled away any number of books, movie and TV disks, and music CDs to last at least a couple of retirements.  But then, for mostly economic reasons, I kept working long past the time most Americans stopped toiling and smelled the roses.  My only reason for no longer working for IBM was because they decided, for mostly economic reasons, to terminate the two of us on the Global Sales Manual team and the ten on the Announcement Letter team with whom we often worked.  So it was that at 73, I was retired.  I eventually was able to collect a few months of unemployment insurance.  I even applied for a part-time community college teaching job which I would have gladly taken and enjoyed.   

But I was not even given an interview.  Was that because they could tell from my extensive resume that I was highly qualified, perhaps too qualified, and excessively experienced, possibly far more qualified and experienced than any of the full-time instructors they had on staff? 

One thing regarding educators.  Many have very fragile egos.  Others have wildly inflated opinions of themselves.  No matter the reason, they don't like competition.  I have also had experience in the military and the private sector, as well as over a decade of teaching at the college level, in addition to having graduated from a secondary teaching certification program.  In addition, I had published the ten RAoF novels.  On paper, and likely in the minds of those who would make the selection, I must have looked fairly formidable, perhaps too formidable for them.  So, it was likely way too easy to simply state in the rejection email, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time."  No explanation required.  Was it my advanced age?  Was it my too-overt life experiences and abilities?  Was it because I am a military veteran?  Was it because they might have realized I was gay? 

Had they even thought about what I might have brought to the students I would have taught, my diverse background might have been invaluable to those very students?     

I have had to face it.  This society does not value the elderly.  And, in some cases, for good reasons:  Alzheimer's disease, dementia, moribund beliefs and prejudices, veneration of a past by those who are older, a past that was nowhere near perfect, in addition to the inevitable physical decline along with the mental decline.    

IBM had no problem with my age or the ages of any of the others on the Sales Manual and Announcement Letter teams.  They had a problem with our collective incomes.  They did not want to pay us any longer, no matter how good we were at our jobs since I, and a few of the others, had worked for IBM for over three decades each.  We enjoyed our jobs and were very good at them.  That was not enough.

I have had to accept the fact that unless I want to be a greeter at Wal-Mart or some other job that would tax me way too severely, my working days are done.  

So what next?  

How long do I likely have to live?

My mother died at 80, a couple of weeks before her 81st birthday.  She had had Rheumatic fever as a teenager, damaging her heart.  She later had two separate open heart surgeries, one in her 50's and one in her 70's, to replace heart valves.  Had she not been sick way back when she was a teenager, who knows how many more years she might have lived instead of dying of congestive heart failure?  Another surgery might have given her a longer life, but she likely would not have survived the operation.  Her mother had died at 86 of a heart attack.  Her father at 55 of a heart attack.  Her brother Robert died of a heart attack.  Her sister Doris died of a massive heart attack.  Whose genes did I get?  (Mom's sister Jean, two years younger, lived to be 94.)  

My father died at 81, a few months shy of his 82nd birthday.  Other than being a bombardier in WWII, bailing out of their crippled B-24 Liberator and becoming a POW of the Germans for many months, he really had had no significant illnesses in his life.  But several months into his 81st year, his body began to break down.  The doctor I spoke with said that from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, everything about him was failing.  When I saw him in the emergency room, I did not recognize him.  You could see through his skin.  His body was shrunken and depleted.  He looked like a survivor of a Nazi death camp.  His genes had turned on him.  His mother had died at 77, her body simply betraying her.  His father had lived to be 94, but his kidneys especially were failing him.  His body simply gave out.  Whose genes did I get?

Someday soon, AI will likely be able to tell us each how long we can expect to live, unless some unpredictable and deadly weather phenomenon, earthquake or accident carries us off first.  But at the moment, I have no way of knowing.

What Have I Been Doing?

I finished two biographies of The Beatles, an autobiography of Barbra Streisand, and volume one of Cher's autobiography.  I finished re-reading all ten of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series.  I finished a thick picture book on the 100 years of Warner Brothers pictures.  I have started a five-volume biography of FDR.   

Many days I either listen to music from several eras (I have nearly 5K CDs in my collection), or I watch new television series from streaming services.  (With Spectrum adding Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount +, I have plenty to watch, not counting the many Blu-ray and 4K disks I bought, most before I retired.  I also watch Rams, Dodgers or Lakers games from Spectrum.  So I do have a lot of stuff to take up my time each day, not counting household chores when Mark is at work.   

Survivor's Guilt?

So many cultural or political icons have died in recent years, certainly family and even friends and acquaintances.  I wonder what it is that keeps me hanging around?  Is each one of us here to fulfill a mission, to complete a significant task?  

I managed to survive childbirth and childhood diseases such as polio from 1949 onward.  The Cold War.  The Vietnam War.  AIDS.  COVID.  Car and plane accidents.  It's way too easy in the modern era to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, on the wrong road or highway, in the wrong aircraft, in the wrong building.  Others go off the rails so frequently, armed and out of control, and the jeopardize those around them.     

Am I just hanging on for little reason?  Like those with one-time talent who make no more TV shows or movies, sing no more songs, write no more articles or books?  They die at such an advanced age that fewer and fewer even remember who they were.  I wrote years of journals, the three volumes of poetry, my unpublished autobiography, then several abortive novels, the RAoF series whom few have ever read, especially all of the way through, and finally this blog.    

Those are just accomplishments, no matter how minor or profound.  

Relationships?  The family is, as I have said, mostly gone.  The friends and acquaintances over the years are mostly gone.  We grew apart, lost touch, broke up, moved away, they died:  Dave Moore, Daylin Butler, Patrick Byrne, Bart Keeling, Barbara Kinslow, Chuck Gover, Ramsey Hammond, Gary Kinateder, Dick Tuttle, Dan Stratford, Dino Gagliasso, Rob McDonald, Willy Benitez, Kent Thomas, Steve Schurr, Chris Keener, Roger Benninger.