Color my World--Please!

I've tried all of these colors and so far have not found the one that is right for the room.

Lots of you have written to ask how the floor refinishing came out. It came out great. I had just forgotten to write about it because as soon as I could walk into the room I started trying to figure out what color to paint the walls. Perhaps there is a reason the word "pain" makes up so much of the word "paint." Working with color is difficult.

The red oak floor, in contrast, was a snap. The first day was the longest with the crew here to sand and repair any damage they could find. After that it was about an hour a day for three more days. The results are superior.



None of the boards in the floor had to be replaced. This is one of the original 1951 floors in the house and (if the creek don't rise) it should be good for at least another sixty years.



Wall color, on the other hand, is much easier to change and much more difficult to settle on. I started with the idea that this sunny room would look good with soft gray walls and white trim. But all the grays looked too blue and cold to me and now the entire thing has begun to get out of hand.





I'll probably have to start again with warmer, lighter colors. I have learned that in a room with lots of sunlight--and this room is one of those--you have to go softer and subtler on the color because the sunlight, instead of washing out the color in a room, actually makes it pop.

I'm sure I should hope this is the worst problem I ever come up against. But at this moment I am tired of seeing those guys at the paint store and asking for yet another quart to add to my growing collection.

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No Man is An Island

William Ashley Chapman when he returned to Ascension Island in 1988.

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Donne 1627

I have been boxing up my father's memories and his extensive correspondence and photos of his first years of World War II. I will be sending them to the Historical Society of Ascension Island, the British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, where they will be a part of their archives and where some of the photos will be displayed in the American Room.

Ascension Island 1942. Work on Wideawake Field was difficult as the island is solid volcanic rock, so it took repeated blasting to construct the runway.

I've written many times about my father's work with the 38th Engineer Combat Regiment on Ascension Island during the war. His two years there were austere but fascinating--islands are almost always interesting--and his work there was the part of the war he loved to remember best. First of all, this kid who had just graduated from Auburn University had his first role in management: at the age of 21, he was an officer with a company of other young men for whom he was now responsible. And then, this engineering student who had only read books about building things, got to build an airport! What fun!

It may just look like a bunch of dirt to you and me, but this airfield handled twenty-five thousand planes in World War II and is still in use today. Wideawake Field, 1942.

On Ascension, unlike Okinawa where he was near the war's end, there were no civilians behind barbed war, no American cemetery with daily services for men killed in combat, no POW camps, no daily bombings, no daily terror.

Wideawake Field on Ascension is still in use and is still an American airfield on a British Island, so it has a few USAF staffers stationed there along with a small contingent of British civilians who work at a BBC relay station. In the last few years I've been in contact with Shari, a USAF non-com on the island who, in addition to her many other duties, works to maintain the American Room at the Historical Society.

The 38th Engineers built the building behind these men. My father isn't in the photo but wrote on the back: "Command Hill building 1943. It lasted because we built it of cement-cinder blocks which we made. The tile roof came from Brazil."

The Command Hill Building on Ascension Island today.

When my father died, I couldn't bear to read all the many files he had kept about Ascension. He had gone back there at least twice (perhaps a third time too, though I'm not quite sure of that) and near the end of his life he told me many times, "I wish I could take my whole family with me back to Ascension." Oh I wish I could have gone too! When he was able to go, unfortunately, he didn't ask my sister and me to come with him, and, since transportation there had to be on a USAF plane, perhaps it was only possible for him--a retired Colonel--to take our mother with him. But it did make me sad that when it was far too late, he wished we could go with him.

As the months have gone by, the pain has grown less, and I contacted Shari again and asked her if she could use Dad's archives. She answered right away with a happy "yes" and this weekend I sorted through the box on Ascension and was able to get it ready for shipping.

This is one of the photos in Dad's files. It shows his first glimpse of Wideawake Field out of the window of the AF plane that took him back to the island after forty years. The runway is that straight line you can see across the upper right of the photo.

I've done research for three small books as well as for a history research grant I received in Florida, and that work taught me the value of the things people save and donate to libraries and archives. Letters, diaries, papers and photos all become gems to a researcher. Since I had that experience, I realized how valuable both of my parents' things might be to history archives.

William Ashley Chapman on the edge of Wideawake Field, forty years after World War II.

Not only do I want them to be remembered, I want to help historians of the future know more about the part each person played in our country's history: the war against the Axis Powers, the founding of a suburban village, the life of post-World War II families. All of these things will be details writers will thirst for a century from now.

So, I am determined to sort through the things my parents left in this house--and holy cow, they sure left a lot--and make sure the good stuff goes to their college libraries, our town archives, World War II museums, and, to Ascension Island.

Because as the poet John Donne wrote so beautifully, we are each a "piece of the continent, a part of the main." Each of our lives has meaning. We are the rich tapestry of America.

My father is the skinny kid at left with his shirt off at ROTC camp 1940. Two years later he would be at war.

My father with his fellow company commanders on Ascension Island: top row, Gaston Holliman, Harry Tufts, WAC. Bottom row: Ray Kidd (KIA, Ie Shima) and Herb Schiff.

My father, home from Ascension on leave in Homewood, Alabama, with his sister Helen.

My father's contribution to World War II was small, as was the contribution of Wideawake Field. Many soldiers and many families made much greater sacrifices. But each was a piece of the whole. And each part that can be, should be remembered.

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Beneath the Facade of Sarah Palin

Images of Sarah Palin from the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Vanity Fair has a big article this month on former Alaska Governor, former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I'm not a fan of this publicity-seeking, clueless egomaniacal opportunist. I was interested to read the piece and see what the magazine had learned about her that hasn't already been in People magazine.

Unfortunately, author Michael Joseph Gross was unable to get anyone of substance to talk with him on the record and thus has nothing new to say about her.

Well there was one thing new: in addition to all those clothes she charged to the Republican National Committee, she also charged a bunch of Spanx girdles to them. I sat up in my chair when I read that. Sara Palin needs a girdle? Who knew?

Oh, and her husband Todd's emails are peppered with bad grammar and misspellings. Now there's a revelation. Todd Palin a dunce? I'm shocked. Shocked.

Beyond those little nuggets the pickings were pretty lean. Since she's become famous she doesn't go out much in Wasilla, not the way she used to. Wow. A woman who quit her job as governor of Alaska so she could hit the road and make millions of dollars on the speakers circuit is dissing the folks of Wasilla? There's a surprise. She shops incognito at Target right before closing to avoid discussing her Target purchases with fans. Hmm. Sounds pretty logical to me. She has a big No Trespassing sign on the fence around her house. I would do that too if people were reporting on my Spanx girdle purchases. (I'm going to have to try those things!)

What I would have liked to learn was: why does a brilliant conservative like William Kristol support her and apparently play a role in her inner circle? Why does Richard Lowry of the National Review defend her in the pages of William F. Buckley's iconic magazine? Did these guys refuse to talk with Michael Joseph Gross, or didn't he think to call them? That should have been mentioned in the piece.

It really gags me to think that intelligent conservatives can't do better than this ghastly paper doll of a candidate. That's why I would liked to have heard from some leading thinkers about her so-called phenomenon. Personally, I think her time in the sunlight will be very short. She's made out of air and sugar candy and she'll dissolve in the first rain.

Gross justified his lack of quotes by saying everyone was afraid to talk to him. Everyone? Leading thinkers at the Hoover Institute? Pepperdine University political science professors? Everyone? If that's true then "everyone" should be ashamed of themselves.

Buried in the article was the fact that McCain staffers learned during the '08 campaign that she didn't know who Margaret Thatcher was. If that is true, then someone of intelligence needs to write a real piece about her. Just talkin' trash about Sarah only feeds the phenomenon and simply lengthens the painful time in which we must watch this inept woman dance in the spotlight.

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Time for A Rant about Burning the Koran

This whole nonsense about that knucklehead in Florida who wants to burn the Koran on 9/11 has really been bothering me. No, I do not think it is a good idea, and yes I think he deserves a kick in the keister.

That having been said I want to make a few other points.

First: none of us was burning the Koran nor doing anything else incendiary on 9/10/01 that would have supplied the justification for Arab murderers to kill 3,000 innocent people in New York who were just going about their business on that sunny September day. So let's be honest: people in America can burn the Koran or not burn the Koran, but radical Islamists are going to hate us. Cowering before them is not a posture I support.

They have chosen to hate us just as anti-Semites have chosen to hate Jews. Loving your neighbor may have an impact in the long run--and will certainly help get you a seat at the right hand of God--but in the short term, no matter how nice we all are and no matter how deep our kowtow, a lot of Americans will continue to be targets of these bad guys.

You don't even have to be an American to be a target. Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by a radical Islamist in Holland because he made a film that was critical of the way Islam treats women.

In a free society it is impossible to keep people from doing legal things that will offend. I didn't like that Neo Nazi march in Skokie a while back, but an ACLU lawyer--himself a Jew--made sure a judge didn't keep it from taking place. And by the way, Jews didn't send in a suicide bomber to kill a bunch of people at the march.

Where are all the American media giants yelling "Stop! Stop! Stop!" when people at foreign rallies burn our president in effigy? Burn our flag? Lynch our soldiers? Kill Western aid workers in Afghanistan who hike miles to bring eye glasses and medicine to the poor? Where is the world outrage to match the kind of outrage and scorn this stupid Koran burning pastor has received? I'm sorry but I haven't heard it.

Radical Islamists shoot hundreds of rockets into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon and Syria and I don't hear a peep out of the world. Why is that, I wonder?

Yes, we in American and the West should be better than those who blow up innocent people in response to some sort of political/religious insult, real or imagined. We should be better than those who assassinate filmmakers whose points of view they don't like. We should be better than those who threaten murder and mayhem against cartoonists out to produce satire. In fact: we are better than that.

Moslems aren't the only people who get their symbols trampled on and their feelings hurt. They are just the only people in the world today who are using violence to protest it and for whom the popular media has crafted a form of justification for it! And like destructive children who hold families hostage with their tantrums, the crazies of Islam now have the rest of the world afraid to do anything that might piss them off.

I would like to see a protest about that. Personally, I'm not going to start wearing a burka, and sitting on a separate side of McDonalds reserved for the lesser sex, and quit driving and voting, just to prove I'm liberal-minded about Moslems.

If we don't watch out, we're going to start looking like Neville Chamberlain. He believed the words of a zealot keen on temper tantrums and came home with "peace in our time" only to discover he had made a very unpleasant deal with the devil.

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Floor Sanding Begins: OSHA is on Standby

Through the looking glass to my living room as it is barricaded off in plastic wrap.

The Floor Sanders arrived early this morning and began putting plastic barriers all over the house (to keep the wood sand out of the nooks and crannies). Since the company touts its "Automatic Dust Free Sanding System," the plastic barriers must just be their belt-and-suspenders redundancy. As with almost all hard work done in California today, this work was done by Spanish-speaking immigrants.

And, like all the rest of the workers who have come to my house these past months, these young men were polite, quiet and resourceful. When I asked if I should cover the crystal chandelier in the bedroom, the crew chief said he would take care of it. The next I knew, Worker #2 was up on his toes, covering the chandelier. I'm so glad OSHA wasn't here to see that he did so standing on a wobbly plastic bucket.

When these guys get a union, that bucket thing is going to be history.

When the two men discovered my 220 power outlet was of the new four-pronged variety, and their sander had a three-pronged plug, they spoke softly together for a few minutes and then hand wired their sander into my fuse box outside. I believe this is how whole neighborhoods get their power in certain parts of the world. I'm not even going to show you a picture of what they did because I'm afraid the code enforcement guys might be reading my blog.

All this is really terra incognita for a woman who used to work with highly structured union crews in the television industry. You couldn't even change a bulb in a light unless you were from the right branch of the right union. When I worked at KRON-TV in San Francisco one of the unions had delayed the changeover from film to video for years because negotiators hadn't worked out all the details.

There were benefits to many of these union rules, and safety was among them. But market forces were pushing back and laborers who were eager to work began flooding in across our porous borders. The market, like a river, will find its path.

Meanwhile, assuming all my fuses don't blow and no one is electrocuted, my Pink Bedroom floor begins its transformation.

This was my parents' room near the end of their lives. I hope both would be pleased to see the damaged floor repaired. (This is the "before" photo).

The red oak floor after the first of the machine sanding work was completed.

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Tabula Rasa Next

The pink wallpaper looks better in pictures than it looked to me in person.

It was a happy day when Trish the Wallpaper Lady finished taking down the old wallpaper in the Pink Bedroom. More excitement begins tomorrow when the floor re finishers get here for their four-day spree.

The room is 16' x 13' 4" and it is now a big blank slate on which I can begin to paint my own picture.



I must have seen the room empty like this when we moved in long ago, but I don't remember it. Our mom papered the wall facing the window with a pink and silver stripe and painted the other walls shell pink. We found it as it once was, under the large pink print wallpaper we just removed.



The room has a real history in our family. My sister and I shared it when we were young, before she went away to college. Both of my grandmothers came to live here in the last years of their lives. Later, Mom redecorated and added new wallpaper and the room became the house's chief guest room. My sister's children stayed here every summer.

My niece Devon on a visit to her grandparents' house, one summer long ago.

Finally, in their last years, it became my parents' room. Early in the evening, my mother, in her funny nightshirt, retreated here with her crossword puzzle as Dad began to doze. The attached bath, which I have since repainted, was small and convenient.





The floor was damaged during those years by several plumbing crises--not mentioned to me at the time--but that is easily remedied and will be this week by the floor crew.



Lots of people, including my sister, have asked me about ghosts: whether this house has them and, if so, whether I am troubled by them. If there were going to be ghosts, this would be the room for them. Before I moved in, I did worry about this.

But now I don't believe in them. There aren't any here that have made themselves known to me. This may be because my parents were so happy here and lived here almost until the day they died--which was just the way they wanted it. I wish they hadn't left such a mess behind: but that is a small irritation. And as for my old bedroom ...



... the light is so pretty, drifting in, as it does, through the leaves of the Japanese maple on the patio. I'm looking forward to adding my own color and fabric and making it even more beautiful. I worked pretty hard on moving day all those eons ago: and now, I'm finally getting the chance to put my stuff just where I want it.

Moving Day, way back in the 20th century.

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Toby Tyler Reporting

by
Toby Tyler
Dog

I just want to say from the beginning that the main thing I'm thinking about these days are the negotiations going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We have to try to get that mess worked out and Give Peace a Chance. What a world you People have got going here!

I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Toby and I am six months old and I live across the street from that female Person called Robin. I like to run over and see her and talk a little international relations with her from time to time. Whooeee is that fun.

My owner Persons are called Mickey and Donna. But I spend most of the day watching CNN and the other cable news channels and trying to keep up with what is going on in the world and with who has the new prime time anchor seat today. It is dangerous in that part of the world! Kind of like Israel. And the Palestinian Territories.

I'm spending a lot of time trying to explain to my Person Mickey about things like: what would happen if we had a nuclear Iran, and how the bicameral legislature works. But he is mostly into trying to get me to do tricks. Who does he think I am? Hamid Karzai?

My Person is the kind of guy who thinks Larry King is a newsman! Larry King, whose skull is so empty he is entirely held up by his suspenders and by his ninth wife ... hang on just a second I see my Person coming over and I think I smell food in his pocket. Hey! I'm over here! What's the matter? You need glasses?



Man, I thought I was going to have to sit there doing that "sit-stay-shake" thing forever. Now. Where was I? Oh yes, about television news. What a lot of rot. Have you watched that guy Glenn Beck? He came to Fox News from Top Forty Morning Zoo radio! Next thing you know he'll be covering the Mid East Peace Talks and think he knows what he is doing. The good news is that last week he decided he was a Holy Man, so maybe he'll go off to Utah in a loin cloth and stop bothering us.

Hold it. I just saw a couple of female Dogs go by. Don't touch that dial!

Hey babes! I'm over here and I'm starting to think about you!

Now where was I? Pompous newscasters. You have to put Keith Olbermann of MSNBC right up there on the improbably high pomposity scale. His qualifications for pontificating are that he ... used ... to ... cover ... network ... SPORTS! Now there is job to end the Cold War with. "I think they are hitting the ball well today Keith. What do you think?" "Yes. They are also throwing and running the ball well today too." Geez. Even a Dog could do a job like that.

But even Keith the big O isn't as bad as that lady on there after him that Rachel Maddow. Ouch. Slightly tough to look at in addition to being a bossy know-it-all. But really: MSNBC could use some real BABES like they have over there at Fox. And they have all been to Harvard or practically all of them have and if they haven't who is checking? Certainly not that old lech Mr. Murdoch! His wife is younger than my sister!

I'm not allowed to say anything bad about that guy Chris Matthews because my across-the-street-neighbor Robin likes him from her days in Washington. But since he started this whole blabbing on TV thing I think we all ought to throw our shoes at him. I mean if I wore shoes.

That face just says Face the Nation, don't you think? Maybe I ought to try out?

Then there is that lady called Christian PouranAdMan. She's from Iran and I'm pretty sure she's a spy. Wasn't she supposed to be on one of those planes on 9/11 but was warned ahead of time by OBL? Something like that. All I know is that when bad things happen to the old US of A it sure brightens her day. Maybe she was really born in Kenya!

But wait: now they have Christian being an expert over at ABC News, and that will be the last we ever hear of her. I mean old Diane Sawyer always makes the other prominent women at her network Disappear the way they do with liberals in Chile. Poof. She'll be pushed out of the plane over the Pacific before she even knows she's had engine start. That former America's Junior Miss is one tough cookie.

Well, that's about all for today's program. Next time we will talk about Katie Couric and how we think that foxy cougar ought to let her hair grow back.

Courage!

Toby Tyler
Dog

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