07.24.08
Posted in Personal, Sierra Nevada at 3:31 am by Dan Jensen
Just after six in the morning, just as the moon set over the Western Divide, I left the Jordan Trail, taking the Cutoff Trail that heads over the tail of the Great Western Divide toward Willow Meadows and the Hockett Trail. I followed the trail and a single set of fresh boot tracks, wondering if they might lead me to a stranded hiker. I stumbled across a dozing rattlesnake, camouflaged in the sand of the trail, who barely moved in the cool dawn air.
As I descended over the hump, a helicopter began passing up and down the Trout Meadows kerncol (a kerncol is a type of saddle unique to the Kern Canyon), presumably looking for the missing man.
The luxury campsite at Willow Meadows Junction.
The mosquitoes also appeared in force as I neared Kern Canyon. I first noticed them at the Trout Meadows spring, a couple of meadows above Willow Meadows Camp. There were several guys preparing to break camp and continue into the canyon as I was, but I didn’t see any sign of them afterward. I’m guessing they turned back when they got to the bottom of the canyon.
I might have turned back at canyon bottom if I hadn’t been familiar with the route, as the trail had been washed out for about a mile along the canyon bottom, from Legget Creek all the way to the foot of the ascent to the next kerncol. There were no tracks whatsoever, there was saturated mud everywhere, and the flooding—though subsiding—was not completely over. It wasn’t hard hiking if you had some idea about the general route, that is, if you knew the trail generally keeps away from the river, and had faith that it would eventually reappear. I did a fair bit of
There’s a good campsite just downstream of Legget Creek that looks like it’s about to be washed into the river, and then there’s the site in the heart of Grasshopper Flat, where Juan and I camped five years ago. I like to refer to that camp as “Scorpion Camp”, in honor of a little critter I uncovered while starting a fire back in 2003.
I veered off the main trail at Little Kern Lake to follow a camp trail that wraps around the lake’s north shore, visiting some nice beaches, and a great campsite at the northwest corner of the lake.
A lovely campsite on the northwest shore of Little Kern Lake.
After Little Kern Lake, I beat feet up to the point where the old trail once followed a kerncol that delivers the traveler directly down to Coyote Creek and the Kern Canyon Ranger Station. It may have been a theoretical shortcut, but there was no trail to follow, so I had to apply a couple corrections to my route finding. Though these kerncols can keep the trail safe from the ravages of rock falls and snowmelt, it seems to me that the old route over this particular kerncol was abandoned for good reason. What a workout! The current trail takes advantage of a lower, less strenuous kerncol which I have sworn fealty to in the future.
Having backpacked fourteen miles since dawn, I was trail weary when I arrived at Coyote Creek. I proceeded across the creek, by way of the huge crossing trunk, and headed down to the river, where I expected to find some backcountry campsites. When I got to the river, I threw off my pack, crossed the bridge into Inyo National Forest, and followed the meandering trail through the manzanita flat above the river. I hadn’t secured my pack against critter depredations, so I soon grew worried and doubled back. I then lugged my pack back to Soda Spring, where I had recalled hearing there was a campground. Soda Spring looked rather murky, and there wasn’t a fire ring in sight, so I decided to return to Coyote Creek. I crossed the creek and unrolled my sleeping bag at the foot of the kerncol that I’d taken in. It would work as a campsite, but I felt a little nervous being so close to the ranger station (no permits).
I had walked around with a bag of M&M trail mix in my hand too long. Many of the M&Ms had melted, leaving the mix resembling a loose, nutty stool.
As I collected my things to filter some water and head down canyon to camp, I was hailed by a young biologist, who directed me to the spot I had just forsaken as a good place to camp. She said she was part of a team that is tasked with removing “invasives”. Feeling a bit like an invasive exotic myself in this restored territory behind enemy lines, I told her “I just want to hug my kids.” She offered me an OREO for comfort, but I told her honestly that I was already full of M&Ms. I was dizzy from fatigue, which is the condition that generally leads me to hiking even more. She headed down trail with her fishing pole. I finished the M&M trail mix and headed down the canyon as soon as the coast was clear.
I camped that night at a nice campsite just north of the creek that feeds into Big Kern Lake, which is a humorous euphemism for a huge mud hole and would-be malarial swamp. I prepared to keep a companion fire going, and hoped it would repel the West Nile hummingbirds, as I had no tent to hide in. I don’t know what the stars were like that night. I let the little fire smolder, took two aspirin for my knee, and fell asleep quite effortlessly.
I did have to stir enough to pump the heat out of my wife’s fancy North Face sleeping bag. I might have done better with a bed roll.
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07.23.08
Posted in Personal, Sierra Nevada at 6:09 pm by Dan Jensen
This last full moon, I backpacked up to the Kern Canyon stock bridge in Sequoia National Park. I started at Lewis Camp Trailhead, in Sequoia National Monument, just outside the southern boundary of the Golden Trout Wilderness. This trailhead sits near the top of the Western Divide, on the historic Jordan Trail. For many trips that begin there, the trailhead is the highest point of the trip (7600 feet).
Tulare County Sheriff SAR Jeep
I pulled into the part of the dirt lot reserved for foot-bound travelers and parked, only to be directed by a Sheriff’s deputy to another spot, to make room for the SAR (search and rescue) workers expected to arrive soon. There was already quite a showing of force: a trailer, a jeep, a couple ATVs, and several other vehicles. Word had it that a man who had been suffering from seizures was lost on the nearby slopes.
About 15 minutes down the trail, I realized that I’d left my wilderness and fire permits in the car. That seemed rather ironic, after having driven four hours to get to the ranger station just before closing time, only to leave the permits in the car. Oh well. Never fails. I always forget something. I decided to take my chances with the rangerfolk, rather than add 30 minutes to my evening hike.
I few minutes later, I encountered a group of cattle, who spooked with no more than a mutual glance, and kicked up a cloud of dust in their panic.
I bounded down the 1900 foot descent, past Jerky Meadow and Jug Spring (a watering hole for animals and the desperate), and arrived at the Little Kern horse bridge just after 8pm, with an hour of dusk to spare. I suffered from a typical spell of outback anxiety along the way, which means I missed my wife and kids terribly and felt guilty about being so selfish as to take this time to myself. Perhaps the evening shadows settling over the mountainside were affecting me. There is something ominous about the onset of nightfall when one has not reached one’s destination, though the night itself can seem quite comforting. Almost predictably, the anxiety disappeared as I settled in for the night.
The bridge over the Little Kern. Note the granite and basalt layers.
Two of the three campsites were occupied by SAR folk, so my choice was easy. I filtered some river water, had some trail mix for dinner, and unrolled my sleeping bag. I enjoyed the warm light of the fire at the camp across the river, laid back, and watched the stars appear one by one.
Antares—the heart of the Scorpion—flared red, like a campfire in the sky, not so remote as the astronomers calculate. I spotted a falling star, and watched a dim, red satellite make its way around and around the planet, first past Lyra toward the pole, then past Cygnus a little while later. Jupiter peeked through the ridgetop trees across the river. The full moon didn’t rise over the tail of the Great Western Divide until I had fallen asleep. I would waken occasionally, as see the Moon chasing Jupiter from west to east.
A full moon can be useful if one needs to get around camp without a light, or if one needs to travel by night, but it can disturb one’s sleep, rather like leaving the bedroom light on, and a moonless sky is certainly preferred by the stars.
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06.27.08
Posted in Dixie, Sport at 8:45 pm by Dan Jensen
Baseball “historian” Daniel Okrent righteously denounced American icon and baseball great Ty Cobb in Ken Burns’ Baseball miniseries:
“Cobb is the great black mark on the history of baseball … he was a man of vile temperament and vile habit … I think that Ty Cobb in his totality is an embarrassment to baseball.”
—Third Inning, “The Black Mark”
Some people just have no sense of historical context; even some people who call themselves “historians”.
I wonder whether Daniel Okrent realizes that there were a few other racists in America in Cobb’s time. Does he realize there might have been a few in Cobb’s home state of Georgia during the Post-Reconstruction Era? I wonder whether Okrent has seen the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. It might remind him just how racist a place America very recently was.
I wonder whether Okrent is aware that Major League Baseball was itself an all-white organization long before and long after Cobb.
I wonder whether Okrent has ever heard of the Black Sox scandal, and how it nearly ruined baseball. As far as I know, Cobb never threw a baseball game. It doesn’t really seem to have been his style, really. He was too competitive.
Cobb was a vile racist. Cobb was a violent bully. Cobb was a ruthless competitor. Cobb was a shameless self-promoter. Cobb was a Coca-cola investor.
Can one imagine a more All-American resume?
Cobb’s mother shot his father.
Good. Now we have guns in the story. Can one imagine a more All-American upbringing?
Yes, it’s true that Ty Cobb assaulted a handicapped heckler. How very politically incorrect of him! How insensitive to the underprivileged! I suppose he would also hit a girl or even a bespectacled girl! This was no “Christian gentleman”.
But it is also said that Ty Cobb paid Shoeless Joe Jackson a visit in Jackson’s hometown of Greenville, SC after Jackson had been expelled from Baseball. Imagine that: compassion? Could Cobb have been human after all?
Ty Cobb was a remarkable man. He wasn’t anybody’s hero, but he was an American phenomenon, and a phenomenon worthy of awe.
Further Reading
Tom Stanton: Cobb was nicer than most people think.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.23.08
Posted in Dixie, Sport at 12:55 am by Dan Jensen
He could have contented himself with stardom, but he had to go out and try to break the last great American monopoly, Major League Baseball.
“I am pleased that God made my skin black — but I wish He had made it thicker.” —Curt Flood
As a kid I was, for some mysterious reason, a fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals. When I gave my heart to Baseball in the mid-1970s, I lived thousands of miles from Saint Louis and the Redbirds were mediocre, but it may be that I absorbed some subconscious reverence for the team from overhearing the San Francisco Giants games and sports talk shows playing on Dad’s radio. |
“Baseball’s Best Centerfielder” |
I was raised with the certain knowledge that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever, and that the Giants were miserably hopeless. That was just Dad’s way of being a baseball addict. It seems like baseball has always been a bad trip for him, but that rarely stopped him from listening in on a game.
It seemed like he had nothing bad to say about the Cardinals. Maybe that’s why I became a Cards fan rather than a Giants fan. Maybe it was those glowing red and white home uniforms. Names like Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock shone in the firmament of my childhood; though not quite so brightly as Mays.
Some seem to have believed that Curt Flood was a better defensive centerfielder than Mays. That’s saying a lot.
I don’t remember hearing much if anything about Flood. He was a masterful centerfielder and embattled player activist, who left Major League Baseball long before my dad and little brother converted me. Until recently, I had no idea what he went through. The old stories of American racial hatred never cease to shock me.
By 1957, my second year in the South, I thought I was beyond crying, but one day we were playing a double-header…And…after the end of the first game you take your uniform off and you throw it into a big pile and the clubhouse manager, he comes and he gets your uniform and he drys them and he cleans them and then you play the second game with the same uniform…I, like everybody else, I threw my uniform right into the big pile with everybody else’s and the clubhouse guy came by with one of these long sticks with a nail on it and he very carefully picked my uniform out from the white guys uniforms and my little sweatshirt and my little jock strap and everything. Sent my uniform to the colored cleaners which was probably 20 minutes away and there I sat while all the other guys were on the field. [The crowd has] really been giving me hell all day long, and now I’m sitting there stark naked waiting for my uniform to come back from the cleaners and the other guys were out on the field. So finally they get my uniform back and I walk out on the field . . . boy you’d think that I had just burned the American Flag.
Curt Flood, Ken Burns’ Baseball, Seventh Inning.
Story: Flood Is at Peace With His Lost Career
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06.13.08
Posted in Religion, Personal at 8:23 pm by Dan Jensen
I kept silent about my apostasy for eight years. I had learned early on that my parents could not handle even discussing the possibility that I might lose my faith, so I took my infidelity underground.
I dropped a few hints with my family here and there toward the end of those years, but I stopped short of making any grand declaration of apostasy. I’ll admit I even attended Baha’i community meetings out of curiosity when I’d heard that a controversial Baha’i holy book would soon be published (after 123 years of obscurity), or that a Baha’i community leader was leaving his wife for my coworker’s ex-wife. I also attended the funeral of a young Baha’i I had worked with at the Baha’i World Center, whom I had generally avoided of late for his sake.
I paid a visit to another Baha’i friend at one point in those underground years. He and I had previously served on our Baha’i District Youth Committee and had attended the same college in the mid-eighties, before I split for Africa (and ended up at the Baha’i World Center). He had always struck me as an honest, open, and modest person; not preachy like so many of my former co-religionists. Though I did expect openness from him, I was taken off balance when he admitted that he had recently struggled through a crisis of faith. I could have responded, “Dude! My faith isn’t in crisis. It’s dead and dismembered!”, but I wasn’t ready to come out of my closet yet, and I didn’t want to shake his faith, so I didn’t say anything. Had I let him down as a friend? I wonder what he thought. Did he think I had shut out his passing confession? I’ll probably never know.
It wasn’t until I got married that I came out. The Baha’i faith of my parents insisted on interfering in my marriage, so I finally had to draw the line, and I couldn’t be subtle, ambiguous, or even modest about it if I was to be understood. My parents would not believe that I wasn’t a believer, and their Baha’i leadership had not accepted my withdrawal without an explanation, so I gave them an explanation, and I published my explanation. It was finally perfectly clear that they need no longer concern themselves with whom I married, or any other decisions I made.
I was a little worried that my published criticisms of the Baha’i religion might make the wrong people angry; say, people with predispositions to violence. There have thusfar been no death threats, but some of the Baha’is whom I once respected most have not spoken a word to me since I came clean. A couple of my Baha’i family members have got nasty on occasion, but as a general rule, most of the Baha’is that I have encountered have treated me with civility. Maybe some of them do because they think I’m still a believer, but certainly not all of them.
I can’t say that I don’t sometimes miss being a part of the “Baha’i family”. I can’t say that I enjoy being shunned by old friends. It has not been a small price to pay, but what I have gained in integrity has been well worth it. I have no doubt of that.
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06.12.08
Posted in Personal at 6:39 pm by Dan Jensen
When our son gets home, the first thing he does is run next door. He and the boy next door play on the same t-ball team, and spend a lot of time together.
The last time I remember talking to the boy’s father, Jeff, something had happened between our boys—our son had scratched their son’s face during one of their tussles. Jeff walked right up to me before a t-ball game. Was he upset about his son’s face? If he was, he didn’t show it. All he wanted was to make sure that there were no hard feelings. More than anything, I think he just wanted us all to get along.
For Father’s Day, our daughter has been collaborating with other girls on the block to organize a dramatic production for the dads on the block. Just like they did for Mother’s Day. Two of the girls—I think the oldest is eight—are Jeff’s daughters.
The Father’s Day production was dropped a couple days ago. Those three little kids next door have suddenly lost their father. Jeff is no longer part of the world.
That day on the ball field, I was overcome by Jeff’s need to keep the peace. I told him that there was no problem; that everything was fine, and that I was sorry about his son’s face. I wish now that I had done a little more to convince him that everything was good. I wish I’d tried a little harder to reach out to him.
As a realist, I don’t believe in heaven, but when I saw Jeff’s little boy struggling with his sudden loss, I heard myself telling the boy to believe. I could not stand to allow the child to acknowledge his loss.
Jeffrey John Mack
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04.30.08
Posted in Religion, Dixie, Humor at 2:56 pm by Dan Jensen
Recent news in the Baha’i world of “mass teaching” efforts remind me of one of my favorite songs from childhood. It was a Baha’i-ified traditional C-major tune with an occasional descending B-flat for blues effect, probably a Negro spiritual, that I knew as “We Are Soldiers in God’s Army”. I’ve been teaching myself to play it on violin lately, and have felt compelled to some liberty with the lyrics.
The Baha’i lyrics are best described as millenarian, Biblical, and didactic; in general, a call to convert the masses. They begin as follows:
Now the Báb blew His trumpet
Announcing to the world the time had come
And like a thief in the night, He came by the Gate
And said He was the Promised One
Verse after verse, the song parades Baha’i leaders before us, exhorting Baha’is to get out and proselytize in the footsteps of their leaders:
Bahá’u'lláh was the Prophet
He had the Word that is right for now
And when the road got rough and the going got tough
He just stood there and taught anyhow
These verses refrain a curious conflict of tenses (perfect vs. imperfect) that brings to mind some of the intrinsic problems with universal progressive revelation, such as “if it was right for now 150 years ago, is it right for the present “now”? And, “is it really right for everybody?
The chorus goes as follows:
We are soldiers in God’s army
We gotta stop and teach the Word for now
We gotta hold a lotta love and unity
We gotta hold it up until we die
I don’t have much of a problem with the verses, as they tend to say so much about the predominant Baha’i state of mind, and truly, the chorus does as well, but I think some variations on the chorus might do the song some good. For example:
(Oh-oh-oh-owoh-oh …)
We are minions of the Millennium
We gotta stop–and think for ourselves
It’s time to see (its time to see beyond our idol called “Unity”)
It’s time to break it down so we can see.
Here the singer turns from the mic and says “break it down”, whereupon the maestro steps into his A-major improvisation.
Post-solo:
We are minions of the Millennium
We gotta stop–and “see with our own eyes”
We gotta think instead of followin’ the leader
There’s more to life than playin’ “Simon says”
And finally, as the music fades:
We are minions of the Millennium
We’ve had our fun–playin’ blind man’s bluff
We gotta think (we gotta think instead of followin’ the leader)
We gotta use our eyes so we can see.
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04.03.08
Posted in Dixie, The Mission at 8:20 pm by Dan Jensen
Old Jacksonboro Road crosses the Savannah Highway within a half hour of Charleston. The name for this intersection is Jericho. It was once the name of a community. Today it is a crossroads on the outskirts of a town called Adams Run.
Jericho was once the site of a hotel, a post office, and a store with gas pumps. The hotel had three stories if one counts the spacious attic with dormer windows and bath. It had exterior wooden stairways, which resembled fire escapes. Around 1964, it was converted to a boys’ home by the Reconnu family. They operated the boys’ home until about 1968.
The store came equipped with a soda vending machine that would allow a mischievous boy to yank a bottle out without paying. The trick to it was not to brag to ones mother about the achievement.
The Mission returned to Carolina in mid-1970 to discover the Hotel Jericho, a bargain for a gastronomical temple, complete with guest suites and a burn pile in the back, all blackened from the last fire and wet from the last rain, with an aroma of metamorphosed plastics, rotting food, and rusted scrap metal.
It turned out the Hotel Jericho had too many hidden maintenance and repair issues, and it wasn’t easy to unload. Without sufficient income, the Mission was not able to sustain its Jericho burn-rate for long. In the wink of an eye, they packed up and left the Hotel Jericho for a little trackside house in the hamlet of Ruffin, which is little more than a railroad crossing on the Lowcountry Highway. The Mission wasn’t actually able to sell the Hotel for a couple years after it left Jericho. In the following years, the final solution seemed to have been found when it all burned down in a couple of fires.
The new location did have its luxuries. The day they arrived, Armen and Cindy discovered the new site came with its own playground: a rusty old metal swing set, an old, half-empty bottle of soda complete with an escort of hornets, and a shed in the back.
Every hot, sweaty night, freight trains would thunder by, shaking the house as they passed, and blasting through the cacophony of insect songs. The tracks, with the trestle down the way, were a temptation for wandering feet, haunted by the occasional odd shoe left to seed the imagination of a young boy. The oily, black sleepers seemed laid out to trip up the traveler, and the cool steel rails seemed like blunt blades.
Every bit as terrifying as the rails was the altogether foreign and unnatural experience that is called—with no lack of irony—kindergarten. Armen had hardly been introduced to the terror of mass education when the Mission was compelled to move on to nearby Walterboro, where he was fortunate to attend kindergarten at a small Catholic church just down a dirt road from the Mission.
The Mission was at least able to draw in some income at Walterboro, but not enough. The Mission’s kitchen and clinic served all comers. It could hardly afford to turn anyone away, but it was put under more and more pressure to do just that. Serving both whites and negros was an affront to southern whites. The Judge had not come to the South to tell anyone how to live—he had come to celebrate the South, but as an Armenian, it was difficult for him to allow himself to participate in the marginalization of a people.
The Mission was nearly compelled to return to California, but the Judge found an opportunity in the Piedmont. It was on the edge of Appalachia, in an old house with a forested canyon in the backyard, where Armen would sometimes explore. Cindy would occasionally come along, but she would unavoidably fall behind while looking out into the woods or up at the sky. She would sometimes accompany her brother when he would explore the crawl space under the house. When they found some loose bricks in the crawl space, she helped him rearrange the bricks to resemble a miniature house. The partnership ended, however, when Armen began to build small fires in their brick fortress. Cindy did not share Armen’s fondness for fire. In fact, she expressed a mortal dread of the smallest flame. It was another one of her quirks that her adoptive parents imagined might have been acquired during her time in Istanbul. At the Mission, she seemed most at home in front of the small black-and-white TV set watching westerns. She seemed transfixed by the Indians in particular.
As passionate as the Judge had become about soul food, he couldn’t manage to make a living selling soul food as food for the soul to Southerners. He’d extended and enhanced the culinary experience in unique ways, but the fact that he was a Yankee in Southern eyes seemed to always get in the way. He didn’t think of himself as a Yankee; he saw himself as an Armenian and a Fresnan and an American, but he began to realize that how he saw himself didn’t matter in the South. Recognizing this, leaks began to break through his resolve. He thought about how long it had been since he’d listened to a Giants game on KSFO. He thought about the dry bake of the Fresno summer air, and the cool, moist blanket of the Tule fog. Hearing that Willie Mays had been traded away to the New York Mets was the last straw. The Judge resolved to return to California this time as a Californian. For the first time, this would mean coming home. The Mission was packed up under an evening thunder storm, just after the mess from Cindy’s fifth birthday party was cleaned up. Kale ran off, tale between legs, to make a mess of his own in the basement. The showers fell harder, mixed with hail and with shorter intermissions, until the Mission set float and began its drift westward.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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03.30.08
Posted in Dixie, The Mission at 7:17 pm by Dan Jensen
As soon as the Adroushans arrived in the Frogmore, the Judge leased some office space in nearby Beaufort, where he planned to start a new legal practice. Mrs. Adroushan spearheaded their arrival with a strong dose of Armenian hospitality. The second day after they arrived, the family went shopping at a grocery store on Lady’s Island and then one in Beaufort, and set out to make their first batch of Frogmore stew, and then invited their new neighbors to share in the task of devouring the newcomers’ concoction. The Adroushans apologized repeatedly for their feeble attempt at the dish, but their apologies were repeatedly rebuffed with appreciation.
The Judge’s career prospects were not what they had previously been in California, but Beaufort was not an entirely forbidding environment for an out-of-town lawyer. The town enjoyed a touch of the coastal cosmopolitanism so notably lacking through much of the deep South. Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan strove to break the ice by first dedicating the office to hospitality, inviting various business leaders in for light meals and light conversation. The blindfold was certainly a strike against him, but suspicions were dispatched quickly with some well-placed humor and a scrapbook of their life in California, featuring newspaper clippings covering his career.
The Adroushans hadn’t been in Frogmore for more than a couple weeks when they were referred to the local physician, a practitioner of chiropractic, Gullah magic, applied kinesiology, herbology, and charisma. When the village doc heard of the passion the Judge engendered for Frogmore stew, he pulled the judge aside and advised that the stew was most efficacious when the soul was fully prepared and conditioned to receive the dish. From that point, the Doc and the Judge spent hours together, often in Beaufort at the office. Before long, the Judge was inviting his guests to partake in the varied therapies prescribed by the Doc.
Rather than a dispenser of justice, the Judge began to see himself as a spiritual healer, but he retained his judicial title. “Health,” he’d remark, “is just a form of justice.” He would use applied kinesiology—alias “muscle testing”—to test specific foods against a particular person. He would use magnetic therapy to balance the body’s digestive energy fields. He would use chiropractic to remove physiological impediments to digestion. He would use nutritional supplements, but not to fill physiological needs, for his concern as a gastronomist was primarily with the spirit. Physiological health was secondary. It could only come, the judge preached, from spiritual health, and was really only a component of spiritual health. With this mission, he was, like any good faith healer, able to draw in both the spiritually and physically ill, so he could be described as a restaurateur, a doctor and a priest. His embraced his new mission with a passion that ensured eventual success, but the young enterprise didn’t quite pay the bills in Beaufort, so the Mission had to migrate to greener pastures.
A century before, Laura Towne and Ellen Murray dedicated their adult lives serving the islanders—a combined 85 years. The judge couldn’t hold on quite that long, and returned to California within a year, but the Mission would continue, and it would return to South Carolina several years later. He would vacillate over the years between the dynamic, vibrant spirit of California cuisine and the well-established spiritual benefits of soul food. As he bounced between coasts, his experience and horizons expanded, and the word “mission” grew more and more synonymous with words like “family” and “home”.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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12.10.07
Posted in Personal at 11:32 pm by Dan Jensen
Our daughter took up violin just last summer.
I recently mentioned to her violin instructor that I’d like to take some lessons as well. I’d bought a violin awhile back, and I’d been practicing along with our daughter. I’d played violin and viola as a boy, when I was about as old as she is now. That was a long time ago. I cannot remember when or why I stopped playing. Was it the bully smashing my violin after school? Was it the move to Africa? Perhaps it was that terrible concert: I was so nervous I could barely play.
I love classical violin; well, romantic violin, to be precise. I’ve always regretted giving up on the violin. It doesn’t help to read about Einstein and his violin. What a pair those two made! So when our daughter expressed an interest in violin, there was no delay. A violin was provided, and shortly thereafter, an instructor.
I’d been doing pretty well during our practices. When I finally got my lesson, I had hardly started playing when our instructor noticed the bow bouncing on the strings. She asked me if I’d seen a doctor about it. She wanted to know whether I was certain that I don’t have a real medical problem. I told her that I don’t think I have Parkinson’s. I’ve always had a tremor; as long as I can remember. I remember that concert. Suddenly I feel like I’ve traveled back in time to childhood. I shrink into a corner as the world expands back to its former proportions.
I’ll bet Parkinson’s is a nightmare, but this is no picnic. I slipped into a funk. The next time our daughter and I practiced, I quit after 30 seconds, and we didn’t practice for another week. I would pick it up when she wasn’t around. I got frustrated immediately. I was ashamed.
My father, a chiropractor, describes that slight tremor as a cerebral palsy. I asked an MD once: he told me: “you shake a little.” Yes, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what you call it.
It can be aggravated by stress, but I don’t always know when the stress is there. It can be rather frustrating when I’m trying to cut my kids’ bangs or finger nails, but I don’t let that stop me.
My daughter recently scheduled a duet for us before several ladies. She had been having a little more trouble with the piece than I had, and just before the performance, she began to get agitated. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it. I told her, “hey, let’s just do it, and if we mess up we mess up. No big deal.” When we began to play, I suddenly couldn’t focus on reading the music. It was as though the notes were slipping around the page; not literally, but I could not get a fix on them. I faltered repeatedly. I’d pick up at the next measure, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was disappointed in myself, but I couldn’t be more proud of her. She just kept going. She played the complete piece without a single pause. She was flawless, in spite of all the distraction that I caused.
She’s a performer, and she’s got one very proud father.
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