A Childhood Love That Lasts a Lifetime

I love this photo of my friend Keith Brown, my sister Kimberly, me, and our other close friend Gene at the San Francisco Zoo.  It was for one of our birthdays, and we're all dressed up. Keith, who was gone from us just a few years later, is smiling and in motion, frozen for all time at a happy moment.

Thanks to the Internet, I have had recent, unexpected news of my childhood friend Keith Brown and his family.

A woman doing research on her own father was searching the Inernet and found my story about Keith and his father Exline "Brownie" Brown--a World War II flyer who became a well-loved pilot for Pacific Southwest Airlines ("The World's Friendliest Airline"). She had lots of information to share.

The Strange Story of the Lost Umbrellas

One of the lost umbrellas looked like this one.  Isn't the inside beautiful?  They are not made in China, oddly enough.

Some years ago, I saw something in a decorating magazine, or in an advertisement--it is enough years ago that I can't remember where exactly--that I liked so much I began looking for something like it on the Internet.

It was an old-fashioned waxed umbrella or parasol from Asia, and I thought it might be a handy thing to have in Florida, what with all that sun.  Or it might be just a lovely object d'art to use in an empty corner of the house. I found a little company on the Internet that sold them, ordered a couple for me, and sent a couple to my friend Holly, a chic retiree who lives in South Florida and who loves beautiful things.  She needed a lift at the time. Or a waxed umbrella, as it were.

It Is So Palo Alto! Electric Vehicle Charging Station at Ritzy Shopping Center

I made a run to Stanford Shopping Center early this morning for a quick visit to the hairdresser, and as I pulled into the covered parking I got quite a jolt.  Well, I didn't get the jolt, but if I'd had the right car, it could have.

There was an electric vehicle charging station in the lot with three spots exclusively set aside for electric vehicles. And there was a plug and everything.

My Friend and Her News Blackout: Or, One Woman Can Be an Island--A Guest Post

Bucolic Bainbridge Island, Washington State, where people go to impose news blackouts on themselves and eat organic food and get lots of exercise. A ferry ride from Seattle, it is, as they say, a world away.

My friend since kindergarden at Loyola School in Los Altos, California, Lisa Gutt Arnold now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, working in Seattle at a foundation.  When she faced family illnesses, the loss of her brother-in-law and various other personal challenges, she decided to take at least one stress out of her life--she imposed a news blackout on herself.  Needless to say, her friend Robin, the news junkie, was horrified! News is mother's milk to Robin. (A Lady Macbeth mother, but nevertheless.) Not able to stir Lisa from her firm resolve to enjoy her life sans news, I asked her to write a guest piece for Robin Chapman News, about what it was like. Here is her offering:

My News Blackout

by

Lisa Gutt Arnold

"Once or twice a week Robin expresses an irresistible urge to share a news flash with me, full knowing that I am on a self-imposed news embargo. Not only is she playing devil’s advocate here, but I suspect that for her life without news is not life at all; rather it is the universe before creation.

Meandering Thoughts About a Santa Catalina Island Journey

Catalina's Avalon Bay.

"Twenty-six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is waiting for me ..."
Words and music by the Four Preps

I think I've just about talked my college roommate, Phyllis, into going to Catalina Island with me for a couple of days.  Phyllis grew up in Southern California and now lives with her lawyer husband in Santa Monica, not far from where we had our first apartment when I was a graduate student at UCLA.  But she's never been to Catalina. Water journeys don't always agree with her.

I too grew up in California, though in the North, and have never been to Catalina. I've never had a motion sickness problem of any kind, though I suppose if I had ever flown with the Blue Angels ... it might have happened then.  Reporters I know say that is the worst. G forces and upsidedownness usually lead to upchuckness. But I digress.

How Did George Washington Celebrate the Fourth? (Hint: He Didn't Bore His Friends.)

A silhouette, made of George Washington near the end of his life, available in the George Washington papers in the Library of Congress.

On a weekend we spend cruising air conditioned malls, eating greasy food, and driving our gas guzzlers to grandma's house, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the diaries of George Washington, to see how this wise farmer, general, and first President of the United States celebrated America's Independence. I had discovered them once before for a book I was writing on American holidays.

Washington kept diaries all his life. With the blessings of the Internet, these diaries are now available to all of us through the Library of Congress.

San Francisco's Glorious Telegraph Hill and a Tale of New Life in Stitchery

Looking down from Telegraph Hill toward the Golden Gate.  The bridge is off in that cloud bank, upper right.

Linda Mendenhall, of Old World Designs in Menlo Park, California, arranged for a group of her stitchery customers--and who am I to pass up a chance to go to SF and not have to drive!--to take a field trip to San Francisco on Thursday.  It was all so we could meet Maggie Thompson and Gail Downing, two entrepreneurs who shared friendship, loss, and a happy new direction when they started a needlepoint business together.