Good Morning All!
Happy Birthday to my son, Jake, who turned 28 yesterday (around 10:30 p.m. to be exact)! He’s a superb special education/kindergarten teacher, a great husband to his wife Sarah and a terrific father to his sons Ezra & Izaak (Ike). If you ever need a friend who’s inner strength is off the charts, Jake’s your man. Here’s to you, Jake, and thanks for making our world a better place. It’s a joy to be your father!
Speaking of birthdays, a belated Happy Birthday to my son-in-law Joel’s nephew, Carson, who turned 14 this past July 24th. Here’s to you Carson! And Happy Birthday wishes go to friends Gary, a tireless champion in the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease; and Bob, a gifted and caring primary care physician with Kaiser Permanente; whose birthdays are tomorrow, August 4th! Here’s to both of you! And last, but certainly not least, here’s to my friend Catherine, human resources professional & mother extraordinaire, who celebrates her 48th birthday this coming Monday, August 5th. Here’s to you!
Speaking of celebrations, here’s to friends Nico and Catherine, who are to be married later today at a winery in the Willamette Valley. May you have a long & happy life together!
We just returned from a terrific adventure at Yosemite National Park with my son-in-law Joel’s family. Lots of five star meals around the campfire; a great nine mile hike to Vernal Falls, Nevada Falls and Glacier Point; a night of stargazing at Yosemite Falls and lots of good conversation around the campfire. It was our first time in Yosemite and I can see why John Muir was so excited about this place! The granite mountains rise up so quickly from the valley floor. Lots of large granite boulders all along the edges of the valley floor. The typography is so different from Glacier National Park in so many ways and then there are similarities as you get out on the hiking trails. Vernal Falls was a highlight for me…it envelops you in a cooling mist and you’re able to get so close to it along the trail. Trail hiking in Yosemite gives you an opportunity to see all of the impressive vistas of places like El Capitan, Half Dome, Liberty Cap and all of the waterfalls that are in the park. There were so many things that impressed me about Yosemite! You’ll want to put this place on your bucket list, for sure.
Our thanks to the Cathey family for a wonderful time in Yosemite! Joel’s brother, Ryan, did most of the cooking, and we had gourmet camp meals each night. The campground was right along the Merced River and we took the opportunity to do some river floats. Joel’s 14 year old nephew, Carson, and I did two great runs down the river…just enough whitewater to give inexperienced rafters a thrill! Although I must say Carson knew the ropes pretty well, having done it a number of times over the years. He’s been coming to Yosemite almost every year with his family since he was a baby! Our thanks also go to Joel’s sister-in-law, Maggie, and her mom, Teresa, for putting all of the logistics together at the campsite. It’s amazing how easy things are when you have folks who are gifted at organization and meal prep!
The biggest highlight for me was the last night of our stay when we took the suggestion of Joel’s dad, Rod, and walked to Lower Yosemite Falls to watch the night sky. Boy, Howdy….was it ever a great experience! You’ll want to check that out if you ever get to Yosemite. I went with Joel and Joel’s two nieces, Ellie & Paisley, along with Joel’s brother & sister-in-law, Mike & Karin, on a walk to the Falls in the dead of night (around 10:00 p.m.). There weren’t many people we happened upon along the way…in fact, when we arrived at the Falls we were the only ones there! We laid down on the ground and watched the tremendous show displayed in the sky above. We got to see Vega, the closest star to Earth. It shone brightly and looked to be even deeper in the sky…some kind of optical illusion on my part…it was really something to see. Mike had an app on his phone that identified that part of the universe that was displayed above us…it enabled us to identify Vega and the planets Jupiter and Saturn. We saw a number of meteors flashing before us in the sky overhead. It was really something to see! I could have stayed there all night, watching the stars and listening to the sound of the Falls. A unique and wonderful experience, for sure! We ended our visit with a rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” led by Joel’s nieces, 9 year old Paisley and 5 year old Ellie. What a great evening and a terrific way to end our time with Joel’s family in Yosemite. We have the Cathey family to thank for inviting us to join them on their annual retreat at Yosemite, and boy, are we glad they did!
We enjoyed our journey back to the airport in Sacramento, as there are a number interesting places along the route we took….places like Chinese Camp, which used to be a thriving community of Chinese who worked on building the railroads in the 1850s & 1860s as a consequence of the California gold rush. It once was had thousands of Chinese workers and their families…now it’s a tiny little community with little or no evidence of its past (with the exception of the elementary school building there which reflects chinese architecture). There are a few abandoned buildings in the central part of Chinese Camp, next to the current post office, which look to date back to the mid to late 1800s. There doesn’t seem to be any informational displays explaining the history of this place. We got all of our information about it on our cell phones as we traveled by it on our trip to Yosemite. We stopped for lunch at a place at Lake Tulloch called “Drifters”, which is located at the marina there and we’d highly recommend it for lunch. All of us had a great meal there and it overlooks the lake, which makes for a pleasurable lunch experience. Lake Tulloch is a little oasis on the path to Yosemite. Our waitress explained that it had public access for many years, but a number of people coming up from the San Francisco area abused their privileges and left the place in a mess. It now has only private access (available to those who own or rent homes/townhouses along the lake) and things have improved immeasurably. Whatever they have done has resulted in a great looking lake that is used for boating and swimming and looks to be a great place to cool off!
I’ve been doing some summer reading and have enjoyed William Manchester’s “The Glory And The Dream: A Narrative History Of America—1932-1972”. It’s a great read about the social, economic & political history of America from The Great Depression to Watergate. It’s a long book (some 1200 pages!), but well worth the time. It’s segmented in such a way that you can read sections of it at a time. Manchester’s prose is superb and he is a thorough researcher. His background is that of a journalist, which I think helps make the book so readable and enjoyable. I just started another of his books “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill” and it’s turning out to be another great read. We all know (or should know) how valuable good teachers are to us in our development. Well, there is a passage from “The Last Lion” that deserves reference here about the value of good teachers/teaching:
“That would have been the solution: to put him (Churchill) under the spell of gifted teachers who, shunning pedantry, could engage his interest and persuade him that the challenge of some courses, at least, deserved his best response. It was pointless to scold him, as Jennie (his mother) did in her letters: “Your report which I enclose is as you see a very bad one. You work in such a fitful inharmonious way, that you are bound to come out last—look at your place in the form!…If only you had a better place in your form, & Dearest Winston you make me very unhappy…Your work is an insult to your intelligence.” He could only reply: ” I will not try to make excuse myself for not working hard, because I know that what with one thing & another I have been rather lazy. Consequently when the month ended the crash came I got a bad report & got put on reports etc. etc….My own Mummy I can tell you your letter cut me up very much…I knew that work however hard at Mathematics I could not pass in that. All other boys going in were taught these things & I was not, so they said it was useless.” Such sterile exchanges merely led him farther down the low road. Luckily there were three masters at Harrow who knew how to guide him upward. One taught math, the very subject Winston thought hopeless. In afterlife Churchill wrote: All my life from time to time I have had to get up disagreeable subjects at short notice, but I consider my triumph, moral and technical, was in learning Mathematics in six months…I owe this achievement not only to my own “back-to-the-wall” resolution—for which no credit is too great; but to the very kindly interest taken in my case by a much respected Harrow master, Mr. C.H.P. Mayo. He convinced me that Mathematics was not a hopeless bog of nonsense, and that there were meanings and rhythms behind the comical hieroglyphics.”
Robert Somervell deserves a footnote in history. When Winston was a bout to go down for the third time, this perceptive young master—“a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great,” Winston said of him—took over the remedial English class. His pupils were considered dolts too simple to learn Latin and Greek…Since Winston remained obdurate in his refusal to study the classics, he remained in Somervell’s class for three terms. As a man he would write that he went through the drills “three times as long as anyone else. I had three times as much of it. I learned it thoroughly. Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence—which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage.”
At Harrow his lifelong fascination with words grew…Inevitably his vocabulary increased. In his letters he wrote of a toy given him by his aunts as “a source of unparalleled amusement,” his funds needed “replenishing,” welcome news was “pleasing intelligence.”…Winston was being taught to teach himself. He would always be a dud in the classroom and a failure in examinations, but in his own time, on his own terms, he would become one of the most learned statesmen of the coming century.”
—William Manchester, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill”, pages 161-162, (1983)
Here’s to all of you teachers out there! Thanks to your passionate dedication to learning and to your students, whatever their ability level may be!
Here is the funny question for the day:
Q: Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Do you know “Cole’s Law”?
A: It’s thinly sliced cabbage.
Here are some thoughts for the day:
“Sitting down to eat in our house is about sharing. You know, talking about the day you’ve had, be it in school or work or whatever, so that’s very important to us.”
—Liam Neeson, Irish actor of “Star Wars”, “Commuter” & “Rob Roy” fame
“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”
—C.S. Lewis, “The Hideous Strength”, as quoted in “C.S. Lewis’ Little Book Of Wisdom” (2018)
Here’s to a great Saturday and lots of love always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a, (Dad, Uncle Mark, etc.)