Deeds & Words

The only part of the coast veiled in fog Saturday afternoon was the spit of land the Point Arena lighthouse occupies.  The lighthouse is currently swathed in some kind of translucent fog-colored plastic because they’re doing some kind reconstruction.  It’s draped in a huge translucent shower curtain, camouflaged. 

They have removed the Fresnel (“freh-nell”) lens from the tower and it’s now on display in the museum.  The thing is gorgeous and amazing; pale green prisms, looking like something underwater, the powerful light bulb inside throwing rainbows across the arched glass. 

As everyone at Point Arena is quick to let you know, Point Arena Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse that is open to the public.  Pigeon Point is the same height, but no visitors are allowed. 

Before we went up to the top, our on-the-ground docent Keith showed us the rotating stand the Fresnel lens used to sit on, in the old days.  The stand rested on 600-pound bed of mercury, a virtually frictionless platform.  When lighthouses first went to the coded flashing, before electricity, the lens rotated on this pillow of mercury pulled by a counter-weight, lazy-susan style, while the weight on the end of a chain dropped incrementally down the length of the tower.  Like your grandmother’s cuckoo clock, only bigger.  The lighthouse-keeper had to rewind the counter-weight about every hour.  Of course, there were four lighthouse-keepers at that time.  Then it became electric.  Now they have a beacon mounted on the side of the tower.  It’s about the size of a small microwave oven.  The beam only extends about two miles farther out than the Fresnel did (twenty miles to the Fresnel’s eighteen).  Ah, technology. 

Point Arena’s flash-signature (and I’m sure they aren’t called that) is a double flash every six seconds. 

Keith saw us to the plywood-covered corridor leading into the tower, and we climbed.  And climbed.  My calves had a few comments to make, none of them complimentary.  I waited to go last, and fell even further behind because I wanted to take some pictures of the spiral.  That’s my story, and I will stick to it.  The others weren’t that much further ahead of me.  Jason met us at the top.  He invited us up into the lantern room, reached by an even narrower, steeper staircase that functioned more like a ladder.  I climbed up into a dome walled in glass. 

“Here’s what you could be seeing,” Jason said, gesturing to the fog.  He pointed to where the Garcia River ran, about a mile and a half away, and north, to where the San Andreas Fault goes into the ocean.  He talked about local wildlife, the odds of seeing a whale (good, he thought); the cormorants, the seals.  Then we want back down the ladder and he let us go out onto the walkway.  The cold wind was shredding the fog and I could catch glimpses of the Devil’s Punchbowl.  It is a bowl no longer.  Erosion and some heavy storms in 2006 opened up one whole side, so instead of being a circle of rock with water in the middle, it is now a crescent. 

“We’re on the wrong side of the San Andreas,” Jason said.  “So if there’s a big one, the first thing sliding into the ocean is us.” 

Thanks, Jason. 

I imagined working here in 1907, winding the counterweight, trimming the wicks on the kerosene lanterns, periodically cleaning the glass of the big lens; tending the garden, hiking to the Garcia River and back for water (they may have had a well, but Jason wasn’t sure); hunting and fishing for protein.  It sounds like hard work, and it sounds. . . useful. 

When I started back along the narrow road, the fog vanished about a quarter mile from the park, and I was surrounded by blue sky and sparkling ocean.

I don’t go for hikes.  “Hike” implies a backpack, expensive shoes and a degree of fitness I do not possess.  I do go for walks though.  They are usually horizontal with brief stretches in the diagonal.  This weekend I went for walks. 

I went for a walk at the Gualala Regional Park.  I walked around the headlands, and then down along the beach, trudging through the sand.  My calves started to ache about five minutes into the sand, but I considered it a warm-up for the stairs up the 115-foot lighthouse I planned to visit later. 

I always carry things when I walk.  Here’s what I carried for my walk at the park: 

1–Sixteen ounces of water in my North Coast Brewing Company metal water bottle. Mine is brushed aluminum, thus probably hastening the dementia, except it’s  lined with plastic, or that stuff they’re not supposed to be lined with because it might cause cancer.  But it’s a water bottle, and it’s what the cool kids are carrying. 

2–SPF 55 sunblock lotion because. . . well, I’ve always had a feeling of kinship with vampires.  Not the looking sexy as hell part, or the sucking blood part, or the holding people in thrall part.  Just the withering in sunlight part.  In addition to slathering it all over exposed skin, I carry a tube. 

3–A tangelo—in case I get trapped for days without food, or just get hungry in the parking lot. 

4–My film camera. 

5–My digital camera, affectionately known as “the little camera.”  The little camera is growing up fast.  I notice I take many more digital photos than film now. 

6–Two rolls of film for the film camera. 

7–Extra batteries for the film camera. 

8–Telephoto zoom lens for the film camera. 

9–Extra batteries for the digital camera. 

10–A journal. 

11–A pen. 

12–Another pen.  Why?  I found it in the bag when I was putting everything else in. 

13–A book. A hardback book.  Why?  Because I was reading it at breakfast and it was still in the bag. 

14–My car keys.

15–My room key.  No reason.  I could have put it in my purse which was locked in the trunk, but it was in my pocket.  It makes me feel better there.  I don’t know why. 

What didn’t I carry:  Let’s see, that would be a first aid kit (I’ve got one in the car) and a cell phone.  My personal cell phone gets zero bars in Gualala, and in this I am like everyone else in America unless they have Verizon.  

So, if I roll down the cliff, breaking my ankle, to lie helpless at the edge of the river, I have one tangelo and some water.  I can’t call for help, but I can take lots of pictures of the wildlife, and after all, I have a book.  I think I’m going to be okay.

What price a woman’s soul?  In my case, chocolate.  Well, really good chocolate. 

Guy of Gandolf’s Fine Chocolate is offering a free piece of chocolate to anyone who writes a web-review.  So I’m doing a blog posting about him. I went over to Yelp to post a review.  When you pull up the review pane, it reads, in part, “Please don’t review if you are getting a freebie.”  Drat!  I debated posting anyway, planning to virtuously turn aside my free chocolate; “No, Guy, I can’t.  It just wouldn’t be right.”  Yeah.  Like that’d happen.  So I’m not posting on Yelp; I’m writing here. 

There’s not much of a moral dilemma, because Gandolf’s Fine Chocolate is divine, and I said a while ago that in 2010, I was going to include more chocolate information on the blog. 

Guy sells his chocolates at the Santa Rosa Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.  You can also find him at the Marin markets but I don’t know that schedule. In addition to truffles and caramels, he sells pastilles, pieces of dark chocolate, slightly bigger than chocolate chips, that are sublime. 

His truffles are a chocolate lover’s visit to heaven. 

The shell of his truffles has that slightly bitter smokiness I expect from dark chocolate.  The centers are dense, silken in texture.  I found the “classic” chocolate truffle to be almost overwhelming.  My favorite truffle was the cranberry, because the bits of minced dried cranberries were a tangy contrast to the intense chocolate, but the hazelnut, with its distinctive mellow nutty flavor, is also a favorite.

The six-piece box is a perfect hostess or thank-you gift, or the perfect gift for yourself. After all, you deserve it. 

You can buy from his website:  gandolfsfinechocolate.com, or find him at the Santa Rosa Original Farmers market at the Santa Rosa Veterans’ Building, 1351 Maple Avenue, Santa Rosa.   He’s near the information booth. It’s worth checking him out at the market, because there are some special deals for market buyers.

Black Water Rising, Attica Locke

Harper Perennial, 2009

I just finished Black Water Rising, by Attica Locke.  Terry Weyna on Reading the Leaves did a detailed review of this book, so I’m going to suggest you click the link, but here’s a capsule review.  I liked the book, and the main character, a bit more than Terry did.

At the heart of the book is a character whose moral compass has begun to gyrate, and the suspenseful part, for me, was whether he would regain his true north.  Jay Porter is an African American lawyer in 1980s Houston.  He is barely making it, and he and his wife, Bernie, are expecting their first child.  Jay also struggles with the ghost of his past. In 1981, discrimination and abuse of power is alive and well in Houston, and when Jay and his wife rescue a young white woman from drowning, this action creates a trainload of troubles for them both.

Locke writes about the civil rights and the black power movement with authority.  In her acknowledgments she calls out her father for his stories about the time and the movement.  Her eye for period detail is good, especially in scenes like the one at Gilley’s Roadhouse, and her ear for dialogue is pitch-perfect.  The book nods to film noir; the truth may be revealed, but justice isn’t always done. The big question is whether Jay will find his voice and his courage again, after a devastating betrayal when he was in college.

If anything, Locke brought in too many plot points.  The mystery of the nearly-drowned woman and the old man in High Point might have been enough.  A story about union-busting, and the first woman mayor, who was also Jay’s secret (white) lover in the 70s and who may have betrayed him to the FBI, was more than the book needed.  The elaborate plot and back-story require exposition and explanation, slowing the book down. The problem is, without the union story, we would not have met Reverend Boykin, Jay’s wonderful father-in-law, a character who must be there to aid Jay’s development.

The issue with Black Water may just be the management of the disparate plot lines.  Locke’s writing gifts are obvious, and Jay has the potential to become an appealing series character.  These problems are purely technical, and I am sure we will see them disappear in subsequent books.

The friend we visited in Murphys just bought a mobile home in a seniors-only park.  The property had been on the market for more than two years, since the owner died.  Sharon had to get creative to scrape money together for a down payment, but she made an offer.  That same day another person made an offer. The seller accepted Sharon’s.

She met the seller, the former owner’s daughter, to go through the place and bring in some boxes and furniture.  A family friend of Sharon’s came to help.  While Sharon was doing something in the kitchen area, the seller said, “Oh, I mustn’t forget.  Do you have a shovel?  I need to dig up St. Joseph.”

Sharon’s friend said, “Yes, you must do that.”

Sharon’s first thought; “The dead family pet?  And they named it St. Joseph?”

“The thing is,” the seller said, “I don’t know exactly where he’s buried.  I had to run up to the real estate office.  I asked the neighbor to do it.”  She went out to ask the neighbor.

Sharon stayed inside until she couldn’t stand the mystery any longer.  She found the seller, her friend and the neighbor standing around a patch near the rose bed.  They all looked perplexed.  “I’m sure it was here,” the neighbor said, squatting and raking at the ground. “Oh, look, a gopher hole.  Maybe he fell down there.”

Sharon said, “What on earth are you talking about?”

The seller explained.  She had buried a small statue of St Joseph on the property, to help it sell.  Within a week, she had two offers, after the place had sat unsold for over two years.  The neighbor retrieved a gray plastic statue, dusted it off and handed it to Sharon.

This was the first Sharon had ever heard of such a thing.  When she told me, it was the first I’d heard of it, but if you Google “St Joseph Help Sell My House” you will get scores of hits—many of them Internet –based companies who want to sell you a handy St-Joseph-sell-my-house kit.

I have to say, this represents a nice come-back for Catholicism’s most under-appreciated saint.  Even novelist Elizabeth George commented on how ignored St. Joseph is.  He’s like that great character actor whose name you never quite remember, who’s in all those movies where other people won Oscars.  And can you imagine being Jesus’s stepfather?

Joseph

 Jesus, we’ve discussed this before. You must not turn water into wine unless your mother or I are here.

Jesus

  You can’t tell me what to do.  You’re not my real dad!

It’s nice to see some respect.  That said, the St-Joseph-sell-my-house ritual seems fairly recent.  Snopes.com dates it to the early-to-mid 1990s, with one unverified reference to an occurrence in 1979.  Hmm.  Early to mid 1990s.  I wonder if there was something that happened around then, something technological that made catalog selling easier, something  that transmitted information, accurate or not, to millions of people as quickly as a television.  Right after I’m done blogging, I’ll have to research that.

The sites that sell the kits wax indignant at the 1990s timeline and say the process is much older.  It may go back as far as the 1930s—wow!—or even (keep your hands inside the time-machine, please) to 1551, when St Theresa of Avila buried consecrated medals of St Joseph on land she was trying to purchase to form a convent.  This story, though, is about buying a home, not selling one, and seems like a non-starter.

St Joseph will only help you sell a home.  He won’t help with business property or unimproved acreage—unless maybe you live on it.  If you are homeless and live in your car, will he help you sell the car?  Maybe, if you don’t move the car, and you bury him underneath it.  I’m sure there is an FAQ on one of the myriad websites that will address that question and others I haven’t even thought of. As the patron saint of families, Joseph has some responsibility for helping with the home thing, but he isn’t the saint to contact if you are trying to buy or find a home.  That’s Our Lady of Lareto.  I’m not sure why this isn’t on Joseph’s clipboard as well, but there you are.

(Is there a giant celestial white board in heaven, with a dry-erase grid, the saints each listed down one side, their assignments across the top?  Is there a saint assigned to the whiteboard?  Saint Erasus, Patron Saint of white board grids?)

The kits, which include a statuette of Joseph, anointing oil, a prayer and a story card, range from the low price of $3.49 plus shipping and handling all the way up to $23 for a pewter statue of the saint.  Realtor-packs, 24 to a package, are also available.  Just think, you can carry a bunch of St Joes in your trunk just the way, five years ago, you used to carry flats of bottled drinking water.

There is quite a lot of discussion of where and how Joseph is to be buried. The majority of people say he should be buried head-down, “his feet toward heaven.”  One site suggested that this is so he can find his way home when his work his done.  Isn’t that a bit rude?  I know guys don’t ask for directions, but wouldn’t Joseph be able to find his way back to heaven?  Some say the statute must be buried in a corner of the property, some say facing the front door, and some say next to the For Sale sign.  Condo owners are allowed to place St Joe in a planter or flower pot.

Once the house is sold, the statue should be dug up and given a place of honor in the seller’s new home.  He is not to be left in the ground.  A couple of posters on a couple of sites suggested that leaving the statue would cause the property to change hands again.  This, again, seems disrespectful of our saint, diminishing him, reducing him to a mere magic-engine, a factory-issue amulet or charm.  Smart enough to raise God’s son, smart enough to make a fast getaway to Egypt ahead of Herod’s bad-guys (according to the Bible, anyway) but not smart enough to figure out not to sell the house again?  Please.  He’s a saint, not a contestant on Flip this House.  Give the guy some credit.

In fact, in this case, what to do with the statue of Joseph was an issue.  The seller didn’t have a new home; she was selling her father’s home.  Her father didn’t have a new home.  In the end, they gave Sharon the statue. 

Sharon is not Catholic, she’s Protestant, and Protestants in general find the Catholic fixation with saints to be pretty suspect.  On the other hand, she has complete admiration for someone who would follow the will of God even if it meant ridicule and ostracism in his life, even if it meant the threat of death.  And, Joseph raised a son. 

That little statue has a place of honor in Sharon’s house.