Deeds & Words

The day before Christmas I signed up for dictionary.com’s word of the day e-mail.  It’s free (but given the amount of advertizing on that site, I’m sure they sell your information.  Oh, well.)

Today’s word is “Paltry”–of little worth or insignificant.

Did you know that the compartive and superlative forms are “paltrier” and “paltriest?”  Did you know “paltry” had a comparitive and superlative form?

“This appetizer course is paltry.  I’ve never seen paltrier!”

Or, “That’s the paltriest excuse for a defense I’ve ever seen in the NFL!”

Okay, maybe that does work.

            On Monday, December 22, I went to the See’s Candies Store to pick up my special order of 150 individually boxed truffles. I got there at 10:04 am but there were already seventeen people in line ahead of me. Eighteen people pretty much fill up the tiny See’s Candies Shop in this particular mall.

            A digression while I describe the shop.  It’s tiny, perhaps the size of the second bedroom in most tract homes.  The shop has a white tile floor and white walls with black accents.  It has looked the same since it opened there in the ‘70s.  See’s captures that surreal retro/timelessness that certain movies (City of Lost Children) and some TV shows (Pushing Daisies) have.  It seems as if you’re in some never-quite-was version of the 1920’s and Mary See herself, with her pince-nez glasses and her crisp shirtwaist, might appear behind the counter to take your order.  The staff wear white and black also. The shelves lining the walls, and there aren’t many, display the seasonal packaged specials while a long glassed counter along one side shows off fudge, walnut roll and truffles.

            They opened up a second line for people who were buying pre-packaged candy only, which was good, except it cleared out mostly people behind me. When I got up to the front, one of the counter people told me there were a couple of questions on my order and I would have to wait until Janice could help me.  They gestured to Janice, who was at work on another good-sized special order.

            I stepped into a backwater eddy of white tile and waited.  Janice was pretty busy with her order, and several behind-me people got waited on.  They gave me a second sample, though, so I couldn’t really complain.

            Janice had migrated down to my end of the counter, near the register, and was bagging truffles for her customer.  From behind me, an elderly lady stepped up to the counter.  She wore a thick, faded red coat that was rubbed thin at the elbows and around the collar, sweat pants, a stretched, hand-crocheted scarf and thick socks.  Her short gray hair was parted in the middle.  Her shoes looked broken down but comfortable.  I could guess that she lived across the street in senior housing, or that perhaps she wasn’t even that lucky.  I could imagine that she waited until the end of the month each month, after the bills were paid from her pension check, to see if there were a couple of spare dollars to buy candy at See’s. She leaned over the counter and asked Theresa,  at the register, for one See’s sucker.  She reached into the coat pocket. Out came a disposable tissue and one dollar bill.  The dollar looked about the same texture as the tissue.  It had been folded into quarters and the corners curled inward.  She smoothed it out and handed it to Theresa. A See’s Pop, or sucker, costs sixty cents.

            Theresa took the money.  Next to her, Janice took another See’s Pop from the display jar, set it next to the first one, and fished a dollar bill out of her apron pocket.  “The second one’s on me,” she said, without really looking up from what she was doing.

            I thought she must know the woman in the red coat.

            This confused Theresa and it took her a couple of seconds to catch on, to hand the woman in the red coat her forty cents in change and the two suckers.  Now the woman in the red coat was confused.  “I only bought one.”

Theresa pointed at Janice, who looked up and said, “Well, you have two pockets in your coat, and I wanted you to have one for each pocket.”

            The woman in the red coat smiled.  “Thank you!” she said.  She picked up the suckers and did, indeed put one in each pocket.  “Thank you!” she went out.  She had her back to me, but the people facing me smiled as she walked past them.

            Next up in line was a woman with perfectly styled, perfectly colored brown hair, in winter-white slacks with a matching quilted winter-white jacket trimmed in rust-red.  She handed Theresa a gift certificate. “Here.  I want a pound box, half milk and half dark,” she said.  “And you.  Janice.”

            Janice looked up, her blue eyes widening, pretty startled to be singled out.

            Perfect Woman said, “What you just did was very nice.”  She wiped her cheek.  “You brought tears to my eyes.”

            “Oh, it wasn’t any big thing,” said Janice.

            Perfect Woman corrected her.  “It was very nice.”

            “It was just a dollar,” Janice said, “She comes in towards the end of the month sometimes. I just wanted to do a little something for her.”

            Theresa said, “It’s like that movie, Pay it Forward.”

            The perfect woman nodded.  “Pay it forward,” she said.  She got her box of candy and went out.  I wondered if she were inspired by Janice’s example, and were imaging a way she, too, could bring a little bit of joy to a less fortunate stranger’s day.

            For decades, the Pine Cone Café was a fixture on Main Street in Sebastopol.  It had a fifties-vintage ambience and a menu to match, even though a vegetarian friend of mine went there faithfully because they made a mean grilled cheese sandwich.  The Sebastopol cops used to take their coffee and lunch break there.  You know the kind of place; Naugahyde booths, old linoleum floors, and a counter you could eat at if you didn’t mind sitting on a stool.

            Then the Julius family sold the business and new owners took over.  It took them a while to renovate but now they are open.  I ate dinner there last night.

            I ate dinner there because I stopped on Main Street to hit Copperfield’s Books for some last minute gift cards. I was tired and cold.  The wooden floor, pale wood tables and clean look of the new Pine Cone seemed warm and attractive.  The menu had curries, Indian dishes, and a number of burgers; turkey burgers, tempeh burgers, pesto burgers, as well as soup and salad.  The Indian and eastern cuisine seemed to dominate.  Only two tables were occupied. They have managed to fit a good number of tables into the space.  It’s a little surprising. 

The south wall has been stripped back to the dark red brick and is currently hung with several large paintings by the same artist. Brick is a wonderful texture and this was a great choice. I took a seat by the wall facing the windows so I could people-watch.

            My server was a slender woman with curly brown hair, very friendly, maybe a little over-invested. You know that type of person who gets just a little too far into your personal space?  Who shakes your hand just a little too long, who stares just a little too intently when they talk to you?  She was like that. 

            I ordered the chicken curry.  The menu says all entrees come with brown rice unless you request otherwise, but she asked me what type of rice I wanted.  “Brown,” I said.  She went away.  I had a book and it was a good thing, because I had quite a wait. A few more people came in.  A group of three stood at the bar, which used to be the lunch counter and is now an uncluttered wine-bar.

            When my order came my server apologized for the white rice because they had run out of brown.

            The curry was served in a separate casserole so that you could spoon it over the rice.  There was a small salad of mixed greens with a sweet and tangy dressing and a basket full of naan.  The curry was steaming hot, spicy without being too spicy, and very tasty. The rice had peas in it.  I like peas, so that worked for me.  The naan was good and there was a little tub of the spicy green dipping sauce that I forget the name of.

            The meal was good.  I don’t understand how you run out of brown rice when it’s your staple menu item and you’ve been open two weeks (and only three of your tables are occupied) but I guess that could happen to anyone.

            I also had dessert; a square of bread pudding.  I chose it because I was curious.  Bread pudding; I either really like it or leave it after two bites.  This fell into the first category.  It had raisins or currants in it, a nice little sauce that wasn’t too sweet.  I felt special.

            When these new owners took over, they advertised the place as somewhere “the old Pine Cone crowd would feel comfortable.”  I don’t think they’ve achieved that.  The food is good.  The place looks nice.  The menu is competing with East West Café, about six doors down the street.  The environment competes with GTO Seafood, in the next block.  Possibly people who like East West but want a quieter setting would come here; or people who like the look of GTO Seafood but don’t want to pay those prices. You’ve also got the Bistro. All in all, this seems like a risky business for a menu that isn’t that different from what you can get in three other places on the same street.

            They do have a good location, though, and if they, of all the Main Street restaurants, decide to stay open later on nights the Sonoma Repertory has performances at the Main Street Theater, they could potentially snag the coffee-and-dessert crowd. They’re not going to get the “old crowd” though.  No grilled cheese sandwiches and potato salad served from an ice cream scoop were on display last night. There was no waitress who knew your first name, which of your kids was in the army and which grand-daughter is taking dance lessons.  The place is nice.  Comfortable?  Homey?  Not quite. Not yet. 

            December is a terrible month to have to go the post office, but many of us do.  We have holiday packages to send to friends and relatives who don’t live near us.  Often we are rushing to get there and back on our lunch hours, or hurrying in for special Saturday hours.  It is almost always stressful.

            My favorite December post office is in Fulton.  Fulton is a hamlet, more accurately a crossroads with some cottages and a few businesses.  A lot of day laborers wait there to get picked up for one or two days of work in someone’s yard or field, or on a remodel project.  Fulton’s claim to fame, if you can call it that, is the Fulton Farms Poultry Processing Plant, where, if you drive by early enough certain mornings, you can see naked chicken carcasses promenading along an assembly rack on the outside of the building, dangling like items of dry-cleaning.

            Fulton’s best kept secret is its tiny post office.  The space is largely given over to mail and parcels, and the back looks like an old-fashioned garage door.  It is always cold.  As you walk in the front door a row of post office boxes marches away from you at right angles to the door.  You turn left and go into a vestibule area, then open another single door to step into the service area, which holds about three people, or as many as six if you are all personally close and no one wants to inhale too deeply. I’ve only ever seen three different people behind the counter, and I’ve never seen three at once at the counter, which makes sense because there are only two stations.

            People at the Fulton post office are always friendly, even when they are wearing hats and gloves because the room is so cold.  They are helpful, and, during December, at almost any time of day, they are usually not crowded.  One time I went there and there were three people ahead of me in line.  I had to wait in the vestibule area for nearly three minutes before the crowd thinned out.  To be fair, I never go there when I have six or seven packages; Fulton is my fallback for the late package or the special package that I have to mail early for some reason (like a December birthday).  I don’t think I’m the only person who uses it this way.  The locals may come in with hand-trucks loaded up, but the rest of us are using it as our Post Office of Last Resort.

            Did I mention friendly and helpful?  They make eye contact, they help you fill out forms.  The other day, the woman behind the counter offered me a flat rate box for my parcel because it would save me $1.75.  I had forgotten about the flat-rate boxes until she mentioned it. They give helpful directions on how to re-tape a box if you need to.  I was going to write, “they even help you re-tape a box if you need to,” but that is apparently against regulation, so I’m sure no one who works there would actually do that.

            My former favorite December Post Office was in Boyes Hot Springs.  It connected to a small local market and had many of the same attributes as Fulton.  Unfortunately, people discovered it, and the last one or two times I went there, there were lines onto the sidewalk.

            I like the Sebastopol Post Office too, with its 1930s architecture and its Automated Post Machine, but there’s just something about Fulton.  Something old-fashioned, something 60s-ish, when civil service meant service and it was actually civil, something special, unspoiled and, as yet, undiscovered.

“A little flesh, a little breath, and a reason to rule all—that is myself.”

                                                                                    Marcus Aurelius

I don’t get many comments on my blog.  In ten months I’ve gotten three, to be precise.  This is disappointing.

I thought when I posted something about “Star Trek” and “the Antichrist” I might get some.  Those should be hot button topics for someone.  I was right!  I was flooded with ping-backs!  Okay, well, maybe not flooded.  I got five.  Five!  Wow! Maybe the trek fans were taking me to a site that would point out my factual errors (such as the spelling of Cochrane’s first name, which, as I understand it, is pretty much any way the writer wants, including “Zephraim,” which might be correct). Maybe some evangelical was leading me to a biblical prophecy site. I hurried over to my site and clicked on the pings, consumed by curiosity.

Five pingbacks. . . for the phrase “body armor.”

I am not making that up.

Body armor? 

Honestly, people.

            So, you probably think I’m being flippant.  A tool of the Antichrist?  Really?  What, she’s like, really mad that JJ Abrams has taken over the franchise, or something?

            No, it’s much more serious than that.

            I just finished reading Have a Nice Doomsday, by Nicholas Guyatt, a British writer who made a jocular jaunt through the fields of American biblical prophecy, especially the end of the world ones. He interviews fans of the Rapture, Armageddon and the Tribulations that follow (no, that’s nothing to do with tribbles).  During the Tribulations, the Antichrist will rule the world until Jesus arrives at the head of powerful army, destroys the Antichrist and ushers in a thousand years of prosperity and peace for the godly.

            Still not seeing the Star Trek connection, are you?  Neither was I until Guyatt provided a handy list of signs to watch for as an indication that the End Times are near.  One of the signs is a single world government.

            A single world government. . . isn’t that one of the planetary requirements for admission to the Federdation of Planets?

            Hmmm.

            Not convinced?  How about the fact that Star Fleet Academy is located in San Francisco, that veritable hotbed of secular humanism?

            Most apocalypse enthusiasts think the United Nations is the one-world government we need to be worried about.  I guess this government doesn’t have to actually function in order to start the countdown clock to the End of Days.

            In Guyatt’s book, one prophecy guru talks about secular humanism.  He acknowledges that lots of secular humanists want to do things that made life better.  They want to feed the hungry, heal the sick, practice stewardship of the planet, act as peacemakers, and so on.  These goals, however, are worthless, because they only want to do them to help people, not for the greater glory of God.  Feed the hungry, heal the sick, bring justice to the oppressed. . . aren’t these Federation values?

            Another reason the Federation looks so good for the tool-of-the-Antichrist-rap is because they’re always hanging around with aliens.  Prophecy fans don’t like aliens.  They don’t like immigration at all.  And the idea of everyone coming to understand one another, like maybe via a universal language?  Nuh-uh.  God already took care of that, thank you, with the Tower of Babel.

            (Esperanto, a sign of the End Times!)

            Prophecy fans rely heavily on the Book of Daniel (Old Testament), and Ezekiel (Old Testament), with a dash of St Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians (New Testament) and the Book of Revelations (New Testament) thrown in.  They leap over the four books of the bible that describe the actions and teaching of Jesus.  For example, they don’t do a lot of quoting of Jesus’s two commandments (“Love God with your whole heart and soul, love your neighbor as yourself”), or the Sermon on the Mount, (“blessed are the peacemakers”) very much at all. As one famous apocalypto-guy, John Hagee explains, that’s because the Jesus that’s coming after the Tribulations isn’t the “nice” Jesus.  He’s GI Jesus, in full body armor, with a weapon array like something out of a Halo game, coming to kick ass and take names.  This, of course, is because he’s going up against the Antichrist and his silent partner, Satan.

            But back to this universal language (I think in Star Trek it’s actually a translator) and the Tower of Babel thing.  I thought God gave people different languages at Babel not to keep them from understanding one another, but to punish their hubris because they dared to look beyond the boundaries of their world, dared to look up, to reach out to the heavens, to the stars. . . oh.  Oh, dear.

            Efrain Cochrane, you unwitting minion of Satan, what were you thinking?

We’ve had Thanksgiving at Buzz’s and Sharon’s for at least the last 25 years.  The day after the big eating day, Sharon and I would go the crafts fair at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds in Sonora, while the men stayed home, drank beer, and watched college football.  Our tradition probably started about 20 years ago, when Sharon read about the fair and we decided to try it out.  Her daughter Renee went with us a few times, but most recently and frequently Sharon’s aunt Dini has made up the third in our trio of female fair-goers.

The fair has a Celtic theme.  In the early years there would be kilted minstrels and pipers at the approach as you drove up.  I haven’t seen that the past six or seven years.  The music is countrified, as befits Sonora, Queen of the Southern Mines, a town of 4,400 tucked into the Sierra foothills.  The Golden Bough, unabashedly Celtic, always play at the fair, while other musical acts were more cowboy-ish, like Sourdough Slim.  The steel drummers weren’t there this year and I missed them.  The roving carolers strolled through the crowds on schedule, however.  Some things you can count on.

The main purpose of crafts fairs, though, is crafts.  Nineteen years ago I bought a clock at the fair.  It is a grinning crescent moon with some stars, laminated onto plywood, very simple, and it has now hung on my wall in five different offices.  Potters, jewelers, weavers, painters, photographers from as far north as Colville, Washington and as far south as Los Angeles have their wares on display. One year I bought a lavender cowboy hat from the hat booth (that’s the lady in the blue coat).  It’s a great hat!  And it keeps rain off my glasses.

 This year’s exciting new booth, for us, was the girl with the painted light bulbs.  She was a slender thing with a glittery top hat, a consummate seller.  When she was a teenager she wanted to paint a mural on her wall.  Her parents said no.  She decided to paint the light bulb instead, figuring the images would show on the walls (which they do).  She painted her first bulb with nail polish, and it exploded.   “And I got in trouble,” she said. She ended up licensing her own type of heat-resistant paint. Instant lightshow! Trippy! They are by definition disposable gifts since eventually the bulbs burn out, but that’s life, right?

You can also buy foodstuffs; vinegars, honey, dip mixes, flavored nuts.  You can buy fancy scented candles, woven baskets, aprons, oven mitts, placemats, napkins; you can buy clever gifts for your dog or cat; you can buy wind chimes made of old flatware and depression glass. You can buy expensive clothing, like the $900 brocaded coat Dini tried on.  This booth, Samiah, also has clingy cut velvet gowns and blouses, brocaded jackets, and tote bags.  I talked to the vendor and asked what her influences were.  She said she kind of sidled into the fantasy realm.  She doesn’t have a history or art history background, but she started making this kind of stuff because it appealed to her, and the Renaissance Faire types picked up on it.  I saw her two weekends later at the Goddess Festival in Sebastopol, which seemed like a perfect match for her clothes, except for the price.  (She does do layaway).  I think she had the most expensive clothing booth at the fair.

The other cool new thing at the fair was the guy selling the “Bed Desk.”  Yeah, I know, I know. . . but the engineering on his Bed Desk is fascinating.  It telescopes open and closed, and the legs are a little longer than usual.  It has hinges everywhere.  It’s this cool wooden toy you can pretend has a useful purpose. He has designed it so you can set a laptop, paperback, or hardcover book on it, or fasten sheet music to it.  Dini and I were fiddling with them and he said, “I can totally customize them, if someone’s small or left-handed.”  I’m like, well, anyone can see that Dini is short, but how could he tell I was left-handed?  Dini bought one.  I would have, because I’m such a sucker for a good sales person, but I was too lazy to lug it around for another hour.

The only thing we never did at the fair was eat.  The food was fair-predictable—funnel cakes, gyros, Chinese and Indian food, barbecue.  I always hit the coffee booth though, and Dini made an annual pilgrimage to the kettle corn.

I didn’t realize at the time that this might be the last year of our tradition.  Sharon is moving, about three hours north of Sonora.  This makes the fair a lot less convenient.  I would have paid more attention if I had realized that.  Somehow, the drive to Sonora, the golden and blood-red leaves of the trees and vines around the grounds, the girls in their silly elf costumes, the bouncy-house and the music, the smell of hot oil, candle perfume, chocolate and coffee, the press of the people, is part of Thanksgiving for me now. a standing stone marking the turning of the year for me.  I guess now I’ll have to find other event, another way to make memories, and create another tradition.

That’s how many books Paperbacks Unlimited says they have.  I, for one, believe them.  Their store is in a converted one-story, 1960′s-era house and they tore out walls to create three large rooms filled with shelving and books

            The Sig-O’s mom, Anne, loves this used book store.  We went there one Monday last month, as a treat.  We each brought a couple of bags of books to trade.  Paperbacks Unlimited does not buy used books.  They give you a store credit for each book they take.  They are a business, not a lending library.  You must pay 30%, plus sales tax of your total in cash.  Since their price is usually 50% or less of the cover price, if you have book credit, a book with a cover price of $5.95 will cost you about $1.15 cash.  That’s a deal.

            If you read mysteries, thrillers or romance novels, you will feel like your soul has found a home.  If, like me, you favor fantasy and/or science fiction, you won’t feel quite that embraced, but the welcome will still be warm, with the one room that is 80% devoted to those two genres.  Nonfiction, appropriately, has an alcove in the science fiction and fantasy room.  Horror gets a wall to itself.

 (If you bring in fantasy/sf to trade, your credit is only good for fantasy/sf.  It’s like they think if you bring in a copy of John Crowley’s Little, Big, and wanted to use credit for a Danielle Steele novel, you’d somehow be trading up.  <Sigh.> Still in the ghetto.)

            Literary fiction and literature also has a room to itself, the first room you step into if you park in the back, where there is more room, and come up the back stairs. It looks like it was part of the original floorplan.

Anne reads certain series authors, and she makes out a list before we come, then spends the time gleefully searching the shelves. She now takes requests from other people, like her older son, and scours the place for certain Clive Cussler titles. 

            For people who make fantasy/sf stay in its room, the owners have given the romance sub-genre “Paranormal Romance” the run of the place.  You can barely turn around without tripping over one.  What is Paranormal Romance?  It’s something we all should have seen coming; a romance-novel structure where one or both members of the couple is supernatural.  Not a ghost, of course, because they’re incorporeal.  Where’s the fun in that?  No, we’re talking werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters, witches/wizards/ warlocks, mer-people (I’m not sure how a human actually achieves intercourse with a mer-person, but maybe I’m being too technical), angels, fallen angels, and my personal favorite, nephalim.  Nephalim, right out of Genesis, are half human, half angel. Unless you already read romance novels, do not expect these books to thrill you. These aren’t stories of the fantastical. The fantastical element is there to provide the thrilling sense of forbidden that is needed to make the sex (or almost-sex) so very torrid.

            Paperbacks Unlimited has been around for at least 35 years.  I remember many, many years ago going there and stocking up on –I swear this is what they were—Ace Double sci-fi fantasy.  These were two slim novels or more likely long novellas, in one volume, and I think to get to the second one, you had to flip the book over.  Gosh, weren’t the nineteen-seventies great?

The store is located at 4625 Sonoma Highway (Hwy 12) in Santa Rosa. If you are coming through Santa Rosa on Highway 12 you have to make a U-turn to get into it. Booker, the store cat, is a little too elderly to greet you at the door, but you will probably find him lying in the nearest patch of sun.  Bring a couple of big shopping bags, allow yourself at least two hours, and prepare to have a great time.

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Paperbacks Unlimited also has a large selection of audio books for your listening enjoyment.