Mission Refocus

Our 6th grader worried when our friend and neighbor asked him to introduce her oldest son at the middle school's Fleet Week presentation.

"I'm going to get the rep of that kid who announced some other guy at an assembly," Scotty told me.

Captain Russell Piggot, the Air Force's current West Coast F-16 demonstration pilot, offered a fresh spin.

"You won't be the kid who introduced another kid," said Piggot, a not-so-long-ago student at the same middle school.

"You'll be the guy who's friends with the Fighter Pilot."





Mission complete.

Museum Evolution

It’s as if the Smithsonian and Monterey Bay Aquarium had a fling, and we just met their love child.

Familiar -- only hipper.

For all that hip-ness, the California Academy of Sciences is less revolutionary than evolutionary. The logical next step among many steps museums have been taking for decades.


Steps in a direction I first witnessed in 1976 when I walked into the National Air and Space Museum shortly after it opened.

Education meets entertainment...

When it works, it doesn’t just catch your attention. It holds it. And that’s what happened tonight.

Pixelated family stories

FACTS:

Sunny afternoon.

Pappy and Marie.

Fresno, Caifornia.

1940's.


When Aunt Ila gave me this picture of my great grandparents, I immediately fell for its after-church weekly family potluck feel.


Simple food. Mismatched servers. Potato salad covered with wax paper anchored by sauerkraut jar. Next Sunday -- who'll fry chicken?

Nice story. Wrong reality.

"Our family didn't get together all the time back then," Uncle Tommy says. "Not like now."

That means special occasion: Birthday. Serviceman's homecoming.

Maybe...
christening? --->



<------
Church explains why Marie looks overdressed for backyard burgers.




Play along. What's your idea?

Woo Wisdom for New Age Moderation

As a child of the Depression, Kay says she didn’t focus on economic woes: "Kids just know how they live."
But think how kids today have BEEN living -- how do we break the fall?

Enter the Wisdom of Anna Woo:

Don't Offer.

It's a parent's mantra in the making: Stop impulse gifts, need presumptions. Keep your mouth shut, your VISA in your wallet. Meet real needs. Maybe wishes. But wait for kids to ask. Then decide – yes or no. Start today. Save for tomorrow.

Anna told Alison. Alison told me. Pass the word.

Gladys Kravitz Alert

In these post-burglary days, I mostly have moments of clarity.



Yesterday, though, I morphed into full-blown Gladys Kravitz, famed Bewitched neighborhood nuisance.

I'd spied an unfamiliar woman who’d been sitting at our intersection's curb for an hour, eyes on traffic flow, cellphone in hand. I guess she saw me – I mean, really, how could she not? I had pulled out a camera.

She apologized for spooking me, that she’d heard from her friend -- another neighbor -- about the burglary, knew it was fresh on my mind.

Right about then, the AAA truck arrived.

Madame Kitzes and the Language Barrier

I'm sitting in Beginning Spanish but the voice in my head is Madame Kitzes, my high school French teacher.

Thanks to Madame, much of what Señora Joseph teaches about verb conjugation, gender agreement and numbers feels familiar.

Learning Spanish isn’t going be difficult, right?
Then it's my turn to answer a homework problem.

I open my mouth and "los libros interesantes" comes out like I'm a bumbling tourist in Paris. Rusty high school French pronunciation.

Señora Joseph's eyes widen. Her head shakes. So does mine.

Oh. No.

Madame: Que faire maintenant?

Writers on Writing -- Marketing Hope

My favorite example of "marketing hope" is the publishing industry's onslaught on would-be authors anxious to trade day-job cash for holy grail secrets -- how to write better, pitch editors, make a living as a writer.

My bookshelf has its share, some purchased full retail, but most bought for $2 or less at library used book sales.

Some sales are better stocked than others. Unusual and interesting titles. Popular choices.

Like the offerings at Saturday's Friends of the Lafayette Library sale.

Good news for me. But I wonder ...

Did someone give up?

Annie Barrows: One Storyteller's Truth

Recently, at Friends of the Lafayette Library's Sweet Thursday Literary Salon, Annie Barrows, co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (#3 - NY Times Bestseller List), shared tales about her aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer, the story’s now deceased original author.



A long-time living room storyteller, Shaffer's turn of phrase was legendary.

Favorite quote …

Barrows, on how she’d addressed rewrites successfully, despite joining the project late, after Shaffer’s cancer diagnosis:

“I knew how (my aunt) told a story because she’d been telling me stories since before I knew they were stories.”

Home Invaded -- Key Repairs

In 1985, this Fichet key opened Apt 5E, 66 Madison Avenue, New York City.

"A pro takes 6 hours to pick it," the locksmith said, 2 hours after the guy who stole my roommate's purse and keys aborted his first attempt to hit the apartment.

This week, one of my sons asked, "Are we going to be okay?"

Insurance replaces things, I told him. But … it’s up to us to rebuild our feeling of security at home. That takes time. We’ll make changes.

We can do this. I promise: I’ve done it before.

Home Invaded -- Neighborhood Watch

Thieves Beware: Our neighborhood is on to you. We've been talking. Now we're watching. Stay away.

These aren't MY signs, but I'm glad to see news spread, even if it means I'm wearing today's dunce cap, stupid for forgetting to lock a door.

If I'd known about recent burglaries, I'd have double-checked locks.

Just like most of us did tonight.

Can you imagine how those jerks laughed, stealing so easily from so many?

To hell with that.

Information is powerful. Share it. Why should thieves be the only ones in the know?