So, it is September 11th... We all know what happened on this day in 2001. We all know where we were on this day in 2001. We all know about the tragic events that occurred and how they are still impacting our lives and world today.
Me - I was awake and getting ready to go to work. At the time, I worked for an investment bank in San Francisco, and it was the first day of our annual investment conference (a very big deal at the time). I had to be at work by 7am PT. I had to wear a suit that day because of the conference. As I was in the process of putting on make-up and deciding which suit to wear, I was watching the morning news to see what was going on in the world, and what the weather would be like so I would know what to wear. When I turned on the news that morning at around 5:30am PT, I remember seeing on every channel, reporters showing a building in New York smoking and on fire. They knew a plane had run into one of the World Trade Center buildings, but not why it ran into the building. On the channel I was watching, the newscasters were speculating that perhaps an airport beacon wasn't working properly and led the plane to the building by mistake. Then as I was pulling up my tights, I watched in horror as the 2nd plane slammed into the South Tower. I stood there half clothed, mouth agape, tears streaming down my face. My home phone rang a few minutes later and one of my co-workers told me not to come to work, as they were evacuating all landmark buildings in SF because they didn't know what else was going to happen. At the time I worked in the TransAmerica Pyramid. She told me the conference was cancelled indefinitely, and she would call me later and let me know what to do the next day, in terms of coming to work or not. I called my friend, Amanda, whose sister lived in New York to make sure she knew what was going on and to be sure her sister was Ok. Then I called my dad for some reassurance of something. We stayed on the phone a while, mostly in silence, until the buildings started to collapse. I watched that on live TV also. At that point, I had to get away from the television, so I went out for a walk in my neighborhood, and pondered life and what was happening to thousands of innocent people and their loved ones.
Fast forward to today - September 10, 2014. My husband and I had the final episode of season 1 of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson to finish and delete from the DVR. The show played a quote from the late Caral Sagan that for some reason struck a chord for me.
Here is the quote by the brilliant Carl Sagan:
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every
human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our
joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and
economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant,
every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child,
inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and
sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust
suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast
cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the
inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable
inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings,
how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors
so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters
of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined
self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in
the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a
lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in
all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere
to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so
far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future,
to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like
it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It
has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building
experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of
human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it
underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and
to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever
known."
It makes me think - what the hell are we humans doing to each other?
I didn't know it until tonight, but in 1997 Carl published a book (among many other books) titled, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. That just might be my next book.
My life motto: Treat others how you wish to be treated.
Wish more people could do that.
Earth is the tiny speck of light in the middle of the reddish stripe of light on the right side of the picture. This photo was taken by cameras on Voyager 1, launched from Earth on September 5, 1977. The picture was taken when Voyager 1 was 4 Billion miles away from Earth.
We, all humans, are floating on a speck of sand in an infinite universe.
So, I thought it a good time for another animal encounter story (inspired by The Animal Dialogues, by Craig Childs). On yet another camping trip to Morro Bay with my family when I was young, we noticed a lot of raccoons around the campground. They were brave and bold, and would come into the campsite and eat your food. One night, we were sitting around the campfire making s'mores (yum!). We saw a few sets of reflective eyes around our campsite - yes, we were being stalked by raccoons.
My dad, always taking pictures of everything, decided he wanted to snap a few pictures of the raccoon stalkers. Mind you, this was long before the digital photography age, and his camera was an actual 35mm film camera.
Mind you too, it was dark, there were no lights anywhere. All we could see were the glowing eyes.
My dad takes his camera and crazily starts snapping away - pointing the camera up in the air and at nothing in particular.
My brother and I were laughing out loud because there was no way the raccoons were that high up - they couldn't fly. Hence the flying raccoons.
This is a hard tale to describe in writing - it was much more hilarious in person (and in my head).
I love my dad and his zany photography antics. When we got the pictures developed, of course there were none of any raccoons.
After finishing The Martian, by Andy Weir around July 14, I picked up Los Angeles Stories by Ry Cooder. The husband and I were killing time in North Beach (San Francisco) one evening waiting for Tosca Cafe to open and some friends to arrive (side note: GO HERE - the drinks are absolutely AMAZING).
We wandered into City Lights Bookstore and browsed around. I happened upon Los Angeles Stories and read the first few pages. It was intriguing and I wanted to read more, so of course, I bought the book. I started reading it on July 26th, and finished it on August 30th. It took a little longer than other books for me to read, partly because it was strange, and partly because I wasn't reading it as much at night because I was tired, and because it was so strange. Upon reflection, I guess I should have known it would be strange after reading the note on the back of the book:
"What's that you say? Nothing ever happens in Los Angeles? Ask your downtown friends and neighbors, working folks you pass on the street - the cross dressing piano player, the Filipino labor agitator, the Mexican bolero singer, or the steel guitar-playing dental technician - buy them a cup of coffee and they'll tell you their stories. Sit down, take a load off, try some pork fried rice. Dig it and pick up on it, it happened like this.
Ry Cooder is a guitarist, singer and composer known for his interest in roots music, and for his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries, including the Buena Vista Social Club. He has composed soundtracks for more than twenty films, including Paris, Texas. This is his first published collection of stories."
Um, yeah. Strange, intriguing, weird, bizarre. Yes, all of those things and more. But for some reason, after reading the first few pages while killing time in the book store, I wanted to read more.
I grew up in Los Angeles, so I have a soft spot for books set in the area because it is interesting to me to read about other peoples' takes on the area, and it always lends a more visual setting to books when I know and have been to places that are being described in the book - it makes it seem all the more real.
The book begins:
"1940: I work for the Los Angeles City Directory, a book of names, addresses, and job descriptions. I am one of many. Our job is to go out and collect the facts and bring them back. Other people take our work and put it in the Book, but we do the important part. Los Angeles is a big city, and the City Directory, is a big book...
I made the aquaintance of a Mr. John Casaroli. Mr. John, as he was known, was a retired opera singer and teacher. I listed him as Casaroli, John, vcl tchr, New Grand Hotel 257 Grand Ave. It turned out we got along, and I was often a guest in his apartment. One evening I arrived there to find police and onlookers crowded around what looked like a body on the sidewalk. The police said Mr. John had jumped from the roof just minutes before and was dead. They asked me if I was an 'associate' of his, and I explained that he was my friend and I'd been invited for a spaghetti dinner. They took me to police headquarters and I was questioned for an hour. When I asked why, the officer told me it was routine. That's when I learned that Mr. John had made a will and left his record player and all his records and Italian poetry books to me."
Each of the 8 short stories in the 232-page book has to do with musicians, some kind of crime, and how the main character deals with it or gets out of a bind. The stories are gritty, colorful, and full of details. It wasn't until the end of the book that I realized that some of the characters in each of the stories had small supporting roles in other stories. Some of the stories were more engaging than others, but they were all quite strange.
There is one about a cross-dressing piano player (a woman dressing as a man) who falls for a young girl (who thinks the piano player is a man), and the young girl ends up killing someone, and the main character of the story, Al Maphis, and the piano player, Billy Tipton, need to get her (Betty Newlands) out of Arizona and away from the cops. So Al drives her to Los Angeles and gets her in with a band that plays at a Filipino club...
"I introduced Johnny to Betty. He was suave, Latin-esque. He huddled with Betty in a booth, making diagrams in the air with his hands: I go from here, you come from there. They went onstage and did some steps. Johnny spun her around. He threw her down and picked her up. Betty was a cheerleader, she got it. He counted off "Hernando's Hideaway" - a pop tango for straight-life moms and pops. Johnny gave it the twist - a domestic scene from the dark side of town. The man is aroused, the woman is coy. He slaps her around a little just to get a mood going. He preens, checks his attitude. They embrace, they dance, she stabs him in the crotch with a big prop knife. Olé, thank you ladies and gentlemen, especially you, ladies."
Colorful, strange, detailed. John Lee Hooker makes an appearance in the story about Betty.
This book is eclectic, like most musicians are, I gather. I liked it though, in a strange sort of way.
I don't give this book two overwhelming thumbs up, nor do I give it any thumbs down. If you are in the mood for something strange, and off the beaten track, something the likes of you haven't ever read before, this may be just the thing for you.
Until next time..
