Juanita's Recipe

Anyone need cookies for 600?

My late mother-in-law, Juanita, spent her career as a lunch lady for a middle school (lunch ladies don't have to be ladies, but that's what she called her job and the alliteration is too good to pass up). Yesterday my wife, Karen, and her sister, Cathy, unpacked their mom's recipe notebook, which Cathy saved from being trashed. 

I love this recipe for three reasons: first is the absurdity of scale, which starts with 7.5 pounds of butter and 30 eggs, and only escalates. Second is that it is written in her hand and stained with the residue of years of honest cooking. Third is that it hearkens to a time when school cafeterias actually cooked for students instead of reheating prepackaged glop and nuggets. 

Anyway, if you want to make 600 oatmeal cookies and have two gallons of oatmeal on hand, please enjoy, courtesy of Juanita.

Juanita!

Grandmother with my girls, quite a while ago.

Congrats to Lis and Randy!

My family and I went to L.A. this weekend to help my little sister get married! It's her story to tell, not mine, but it was fun and beautiful and nearly flawless, at least until Darth Vader showed up and force-choked me. All our love to the bride and groom, my new younger brother.

In a weekend of lifetime memories and highlights, I was especially happy to reconnect with Steve De Jarnatt, a film director who's known Lis for nearly 20 years and me since my book, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? came out. 

Steve directed the movies "Miracle Mile" and "Cherry 2000" in addition to countless TV episodes, but our connection is the 1939 World's Fair, which I featured in my book and Steve is an avid fan and collector of. After our fire, Steve sent me a care package full of vintage Fair memorabilia and ephemera, which was one of the kindest, most generous things anyone did for me in those days.

Happy Daughters AND Comic Book Day!

I'm reminded that today is both International Daughters Day and International Comic Book Day. I am in the very unusual and nifty position of being able to celebrate both simultaneously, as my daughters have appeared somewhere in every graphic novel I've done (yay, crowd scenes!).

This drawing features me, my wife Karen, and our daughters Laura and Robin. Long-time readers may not recognize this art because it's from an as-yet-unpublished book that I suspect will probably stay that way. Alas. But at least I get to use it for today. 

Happy International Daughters/Comic Book Day, Chiquitas!

Terri Libenson

I reconnected with former syndicated cartoonist and bestselling middle-grade author Terri Libenson when she did a meet-and-greet at Copperfield's Books in Petaluma, Calif. yesterday. We've known each other online for a while and met in person once at the Denver Pop Culture Con in 2019. We had time for a very nice conversation between young fans being delighted by her. Because she is delightful.

The artwork is from Terri's "Pajama Diaries" comic strip that she donated to the Cartoon Art Museum in 2020 to be auctioned off as a fundraiser. I bought it. So yesterday I took the opportunity to have her inscribe and sign it to me! A nice closed circle. 

Terri is currently on a book tour that had her doing three school visits yesterday, doing two more school visits today, and catching a flight to Australia tonight. I asked her how the life of a successful bestselling author suited her and she said she liked it fine, but I don't think I'd have the stamina for it. 

It was great to see her, and I'm very glad we had time to talk. I wish her the best of luck on her tour!

P.S.--I look unusually red and blotchy in this photo because I got a sunburn over the weekend. As a descendant of the pale pasty peoples of the icy north, I always look a little red and blotchy, but not this red and blotchy. My olive-skinned wife and daughters regard me with pity and horror.

P.P.S.--The Copperfield's bookstore in Petaluma has a big stack of "Fire Story" paperbacks that I signed while I was there, so if you want one that's a good place to find it. Please support your heroic local independent bookseller whenever you can.

Space, the VR Frontier

 

My daughters treated me to an extraordinary experience yesterday. "Space Explorers: The Infinite" is a pop-up virtual reality trip to the International Space Station that, as far as I can tell, is only available in Richmond, California through the end of November (a previous installation in Tacoma is over). I've wanted to be an astronaut my entire life. This is as close as I will get.

The front door.

Wearing VR headsets, you and your party walk into a room the size of a basketball court with about 20 other people. But of course it doesn't look like that to you--as far as you can tell, you're floating through space into a kind of translucent CGI model of the ISS. Your own body sparkles like you're beaming up to the Enterprise. You can walk through the ISS layout while other visitors fade in and out around you as glowing avatars. That's all well and good, and kind of what I expected. Fine, fun, neat.

Heading in. It was not crowded yesterday.

But the experience gets dialed up to infinity (and beyond!) when you touch one of the many glowing orbs floating through the model. Suddenly you're aboard the actual ISS, standing right beside real astronauts doing tasks, greeting newly arriving colleagues, getting a haircut, throwing a football. SpaceX sent VR cameras to the ISS in 2019 to get this immersive footage. It's amazing. Breathtaking.

I can't emphasize this enough: YOU ARE THERE. IN SPACE. Full-scale 3-D, 360 degrees around. Floating weightlessly beside real astronauts who are the same size as you. You look up, the space station modules extend for dozens of meters away. You look down, another corridor stretches beneath your feet. 

That's what really got me: the SCALE of the thing. I know the dimensions of the ISS, but to be inside these modules that each feels about as big as a railroad freight car or a transit bus, was stunning. It's the difference between knowing and experiencing.

A good overview of how the experience is laid out.

Better: toward the end, you're directed to a chair for more VR, and I think the reason they need you to sit down is that most people would find floating freely in open space so disorienting they'd flop to the floor like a carp. You look to your left, and an astronaut opens the ISS cupola windows to peer out at you. You look up, and two astronauts back slowly out of a hatch to do a spacewalk. You look down, left, right, and the disk of the Earth covers nearly half the universe as you fly over Italy and across the Mediterranean. The ISS is an enormous, complex machine stretching away in every direction around you, and YOU ARE THERE.

I confess, I may have shed a tear inside my VR kit. It moved me. I could've spent an hour just flying over the Earth like Superman.

The whole thing takes 35-40 minutes to go through. I see that an adult ticket costs $44 (less for children and students). It's worth it. In addition, there are more floating orbs than anyone could touch in one visit, so everyone gets a different experience and I'm sure repeat visits would be different every time.

I don't know if other versions of this are or will be available elsewhere. They must be. If you're a space nut who gets the opportunity, take it. I can't promise it'll change your life, but you'll never forget it.

Don Rubin

Don. Photo by Peter Maresca.

My friend Don Rubin died last week, and it took me a few days to think of something fitting and good enough to say about him. Don built his reputation as a game designer and puzzle maker, creating brainteasers and graphic/textual/artistic entertainments of enormous complexity. He published many of them over the decades.

He was also in the comics business, working as an editor for publisher Peter Maresca, from whom I nicked this photo of Don because I couldn't find a good one of my own. Maresca is respected in comics circles for his oversized collections of meticulously curated and restored classic comic strips, and Don had a hand in producing those. He was driven to get it right, and could recall with great passion an instance or two when (apologies to Mr. Maresca) he thought Pete hadn't taken his guidance the way he should have. He loved and cared.

Don and I met not through our comics but through our wives, who worked together. Karen and Caroline compared notes--"Your husband makes comics? So does mine!"--and we hit it off. Don was a talker with East Coast energy and cadence. A natural storyteller. He had deeply penetrating insights into narrative and publishing, which made him someone whose word I respected and whose approval I sought. 

Don was one of only a half dozen or so people who've seen my current comics project. It's a bit odd and ambitious, and Don immediately got what I was doing and why I was doing it. "If this then that and then you can do this but what about that?" He was excited. I wish he'd lived to see it done. If it's ever published, he'll have an acknowledgment. 

I always thought that Don's great gift was seeing patterns that other people didn't. He found patterns in puzzles, stories, characters, graphics, current events. He looked at a series of panels from my new stuff and said "It's like music," which was in my head while I was drawing them but hadn't told anyone else. I once asked Don what inspired him to create a new type of puzzle. "Everything," he said. "Everything I do or see every day is raw material." His brain worked sideways from yours and mine, with wonderful results. 

Don and Caroline lost their home in the same fire we did. We didn't live near each other, the fire was just that big. I think it took a lot of wind out of his sails (as it did ours). They rebuilt like we did; the last time I saw Don was about a month ago when we brought take-out to their house for dinner. It's up in the hills, with spectacular views toward the west, and Don--who was very sick then--talked about the beauty of the terrain despite its fire scars. I'm glad that at least he made it back home to see many more magnificent sunsets. 

I'm heartsick for Caroline. For myself, I only wish I'd known Don longer and better, and had many more meals and talks together. He was the best.

EDITED TO ADD (Mostly so I hold onto it--here's Don's obit, which was published in newspapers nationwide):

April 6, 1945 - April 8, 2022 Donald Joel Rubin, one of the world's premier creators of games and puzzles, died of cancer at his home in Santa Rosa, California on April 8, 2022. Don was born April 6, 1945 in Malden, Mass. He graduated magna cum laude from Boston University's College of Communication.

His exceptional career evolved from teaching school in Maine, to serving as a creative consultant, scriptwriter, game designer, photographer, puzzler, research historian, contributing editor and writer. In the late 1980's his creation "The Real Puzzle" was first published in the Boston Phoenix, then The Real Paper, prior to its syndication in over 300 national and international newspapers and magazines through United Features Syndicate. The Real Puzzle generated so much fan mail that the U.S. Post Office gave Don his own zip code. Don became a mini expert in each field that was the focus of the weekly puzzle and attributed his creativity to a "poor diet and lack of sleep". He wrote many books including, "The Real Puzzle Book", "What's the Big Idea", "Those Incredible Puzzles", "Think Tank", "Brainstorms" and "More Brainstorms". His Parking Lot Puzzle has been called "one of the greatest puzzles of all time."

As print media gradually began to fade, Don refocused his creative genius on interactive games with original content working as a Senior Game Designer at Shockwave, Firemint, Ringzero Networks, and Electronic Arts. Don was a member of the Screen Writers Guild, with clients including Paramount Pictures, PBS NOVA, several Fortune 500 companies, and educational institutions. Don won numerous awards for editorial design, art direction, television and film design, photography, game design, advertising copywriting, and Web content development.

Although Don did not have children, he was an animal lover. At times he cared for many dogs, both his own and friends, bottle-fed a kangaroo, herded and fed cattle on an Australian working ranch, and back at home in Santa Rosa helped with the dogs, cats, chickens and bees.

Many friends sought out his keen intellect and insight into everything from current events, arts and cultural trends, to his astute reflections on everyday life. Don was a great fan of Samuel Beckett and could recite, "Waiting for Godot" in its entirety from memory, quoting recently, "I've talked with you about this and that, I explained the twilight, admittedly. But is it enough, that's what tortures me, is it enough." (Pozzo)

Don is survived by his wife, Caroline Judy, the former Director of General Services, County of Sonoma, and his brother, Harvey Rubin. A Celebration of Life event is being planned with details forthcoming. Please consider a donation in Don's name to HIAS at https://www.hias.org. 

Wayne Thiebaud

 

I emerge from the holiday to see that Wayne Thiebaud died at 101. I attended UC Davis between 1978-83, when Thiebaud was an active part of the art department and campus life. He, with artists like sculptor Robert Arneson, painter Roland Peterson and others, made Davis a respected center of the West Coast art scene. 

I didn't take a class from Thiebaud--I don't think he taught undergrads--but I know I attended the opening of at least one of his exhibitions, since attendance was part of my studio art classes' grades (I got the impression they weren't sure anybody else would show up). I'm sure I exchanged a few words with him that I don't remember. My first-hand impression confirms his reputation: he was nice, and he loved teaching. He was certainly a highly regarded artist but not quite the Great Thiebaud he would become, and it wasn't unusual to see paintings that now sell for multi-millions hanging in the Memorial Union lobby or the halls of the art building. 

I can't say how many students realized they were in the presence of a great artist--probably not many--but those of us who were aware of it really appreciated it even at the time. To me, he always represented what a university was supposed to be: not just a place you went to take some classes and get a diploma, but a community where it was perfectly ordinary to see a world-class artist (or writer or physicist) pedaling a bicycle down the street, contributing to an educational and cultural environment I didn't really appreciate until I left it. Aside from a lifelong love of Thiebaud's art, that's my takeaway from his life.

Holiday Tea on the USS Hornet

Festive!

Our daughter Laura is the XO (Executive Officer) of the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum in Alameda, Calif., and a few times a year puts on an Officers' Tea to raise money to support her museum's Collections and Exhibitions Dept., always with the help of her sister Robin and a couple of hardy volunteers. We attend whenever we can--today with Karen's sister Cathy and (most of) her family. This was the first tea since the pandemic began and there were no signs of rust in the operation. Maybe 30 to 35 vaccinated folks, all of whom seemed to have a great time, with a second seating that's happening as I type this.

Part of the fun is eating and drinking from the Hornet's historic collection of plates and cups and saucers. Laura studied old photos to set it up as much like it would have been in the 1940s or '50s as possible. They put on a first-class spread, and the ticket price includes admission to the museum. Great food PLUS a day aboard an aircraft carrier?! What a deal!

It's a ton of work, but for a small museum (not physically small--it's the size of a floating skyscraper!) every dollar counts. Having it a week before Christmas makes it extra festive and special. A very nice day.

Historic!

What a menu! Laura and Robin do all the cooking and baking themselves. They also blended the tea selections.

In the galley, Laura (right) and her friend Esme prepare sandwiches to follow the salad course.

Teapots and teabags locked and loaded.

My brother-in-law Marc, nephew Brian, Brian's girlfriend Charlene, sister-in-law Cathy, and Karen.

Marc and I toasting, with a nice view of the wardroom behind us. Low ceilings.

This pelican was feasting, just sitting on the Hornet's mooring lines and swooping down when a fish wandered beneath him. A fine sushi buffet.

A good day on the Gray Ghost. Don't think I've ever had a bad one (unlike many of the sailors and Marines who once served aboard her).

RIP Ms. Nicholas

Here's the best obituary I've read in a long time. The late Helen Nicholas of Petaluma, Calif. taught Home Economics for decades. Her obit concludes: "In lieu of flowers, please bake and enjoy Mrs. Foody's Petaluma Junior High Cinnamon Rolls with your friends and family..." and then proceeds to print the entire recipe! Fantastic! 

A good obit can be a treasure. "The Economist" magazine used to specialize in interesting, graceful obits of ordinary people who did extraordinary things (I still remember one about a watchmaker that made him sound like the Rembrandt of gears and springs). The fact that Ms. Nicholas's family marked her passing with a cinnamon roll recipe tells me more about her than another thousand words could have.

Mrs. Foody's Petaluma Junior High Cinnamon Rolls

Preheat oven to 425

Bake time 10-15 minutes

Rolls

2 C flour

1 T baking powder

1 t salt

¼ C shortening

¾ C milk

1T melted butter

Cinnamon and sugar mixture

Frosting

1 t melted butter

1 C powdered sugar

1 T water

1 t vanilla

Instructions

Stir flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Cut shortening into the bowl and mix until crumbly. Stir in milk with a fork. Roll out dough, spread melted butter over the dough. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar all over. Roll up and cut into 1 inch slices and place in a cupcake pan.

Frosting: mix all ingredients together and drizzle over warm cinnamon rolls.

I have no idea if these rolls are actually good. If anybody tries the recipe, please report back!

Guy Maniscalco

 

My barber died and I'm sad. 

Guy Maniscalco was 84-ish and had cut my hair for 21 years. He'd been a barber since 1962. Guy was East Coast Italian, old-school and charmingly profane. His favorite joke: "I'm gonna give you an 'orgasm haircut.' Girls are gonna see you walking down the street and have an orgasm."

Over the years I heard most of his life story. He left an abusive father and family very young, headed west as soon as he could, and in the 1970s opened a big (16 chair?) barbershop in San Carlos, south of San Francisco, where, to hear him tell it, he became the unofficial team barber for both the S.F. Giants and 49ers when they played at Candlestick Park. As he neared what for most people would be retirement age, he and his wife Mary sold that business and moved to the Wine Country, where he toiled in smaller and slower barber shops until finally winding up working for himself in a hole-in-the-wall he rented in an odd old commercial business park. Mary died about 10 years ago; Guy still marked every anniversary and talked things over with her urn on his mantel at home.

Guy was a friend, a good man, and the best barber I ever had, one who took a lot of pride in his work and moved with the kind of grace and efficiency you only get after you've done something a hundred thousand times. It was always a pleasure to watch such a skilled craftsman do the only thing he ever wanted to do. I'll miss him a lot.

The Moment Between "Before" and "After"

Today is my daughters' birthday. Usually I make a joke about the Ides of March and post a cute photo of them as babies cuddling with each other or asleep on my chest. Thought I'd go in a different direction this time.

This is the very first photo I ever took of both of them together, moments after their births. There would follow hundreds of other photos of them together, but this was the first. You can see their little bald heads; they eventually grew hair. They were a few weeks premature and weighed about 5 pounds. As I recall, each had her own dedicated nurse. They were basically healthy but spent a couple of days in neonatal incubators. Karen needed more recovery time than they did. A few decades earlier, probably none of them would have survived the pregnancy.

There are very few moments that abruptly cleave a lifetime into "before" and "after." This is my happiest one. Happy Birthday, Chiquitas!

EDITED TO ADD:

HERE'S a story: we took the girls out to a nice restaurant for their birthday tonight, our county having recently opened to very limited indoor dining. Karen looks across the room at one of the four other parties in the place. "Do we know her?" I take a peek. "She looks familiar." A few minutes later she hails us, and we compare notes. Turns out she was our Lamaze coach before the girls were born, and her birthday is the same as theirs.

"I remember that you had twins!" she said.

"Well, here they are!" I said.

"Small world" doesn't begin to cover the incredible chain of circumstances that brought a woman who helped prepare us to bring our daughters into the world to that place at that time on this night. She seemed delighted to see how her work turned out. If I could've given her a long hug I would have.

Karen is All the Agent I Need

Here's a story I meant to tell a long time ago, with a possible follow-up that happened just this morning....

Last July, my wife Karen was one of many California county officials who met in Sacramento to talk about disaster preparedness. On her way out the door, almost as a joke, I handed her a signed copy of A Fire Story and said, “Give this to the most important person you see.”

Later that day, it’s announced that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to meet with a small group of those county officials to hear their disaster stories. A list is prepared; Karen isn’t on it. She walks up to the aide and says, “I need to be on that list.” The aide says, “Sorry, the governor only has time to hear from a few people.” “I don’t need to tell him my story,” says Karen. “This book is my story.” The aide looks at A Fire Story and says, “That’s YOU?!” and adds her to the list. And that’s how she handed my book to Newsom, who thanked her sincerely and promised to read it.

That afternoon, Karen called me and said, "Guess who I gave your book to."

Today I'm told that the California State Libraries, in cooperation with the Governor's Office, is putting together an exhibition of books about California by California authors, which will be displayed in the Governor's Mansion and then added to the library's permanent collection. They'd like A Fire Story to be part of it.

I can only wonder, and will never know, if Karen's chutzpah back in July had anything to do with this neat recognition now.

Snoopy, Bingo, Doolittle and Me

The Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated its 12th anniversary with free admission and ice cream cake last night. Had a nice low-key time talking with museum Education Director Jessica Ruskin and two people I'm proud to know a little, Brian Narelle and his wife Robin Goodrow.

Brian is a cartoonist/writer/actor who uses comics therapeutically (I need to hook him up with Graphic Medicine...). In his younger days he was one of the stars of the cult classic sci-fi film "Dark Star" playing Lt. Doolittle, directed by a young up-and-comer named John Carpenter.

Brian drew dozens of sketches for kids, and had a line all evening long.

Lt. Doolittle (on left) looks very concerned. If you haven't seen "Dark Star" I recommend it: low budget, smart, weird, and very darkly funny.

If you were a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 80s and 90s, you may remember Robin as the star of the TV program "Buster and Me." More recently she did a program called "Bingo and Molly." Lots of puppetry and positive messages, very sweet.

At arm's length with Robin.

This was Robin a few years ago, with a great ape named Vanilla. As I posted this photo, it occurred to me that Vanilla is pawing her almost exactly as I am in our selfie, just mirror-imaged. 

Between them they've got some Emmy Awards, and they're two of the kinder and gentler people I know. They also knew Robin Williams, so I spent a few minutes talking with Robin about him. Brian was too busy drawing cartoons for museum visitors; he had a line all evening, so I just had a moment to say Hi to him.

Nice people, nice place.

Marking the Day

Today would have been Mom's 74th birthday. To commemorate it, I thought I'd post some pics from her 64th, which was the birthday I wrote about in Mom's Cancer. August 22, 2003. Here's the big page from that chapter:

And here's the real thing. What, you didn't think I made it up, did you?

We put out a nice spread.

Opening gifts with Kid Sis.

 

Nurse Sis demonstrates the proper operation of a scalp massager.

Nurse Sis, Mom, and me workin' the Hawaiian

My daughters, my wife Karen, me, Nurse Sis and Kid Sis. Not sure what we're all doing with our hands. Let's say we were channeling healing energy, although more likely we were acting silly for the camera.



Mom and her Hero. Hero's doing fine with my sisters, by the way, although he's gotten gray around the muzzle. Haven't we all.



 

 

I think and dream about Mom a lot, almost always happily. Memories of this party are some of the happiest. It was a good day.

.

Antiquated

Yesterday Karen and I went to an Antiques Fair, which often puts me in an agreeably reflective mood. I like antiques, particularly antique gadgets. If I allowed myself, I could fill a room with old radios (vacuum tubes!) and telegraph equipment (electromagnets!). Fortunately, I remain strong and my home uncluttered. Relatively.

I do have a small collection of stereo cards and a stereoscope with which to view them. These early 3-D Viewmasters were all the rage in the 1890s. I can imagine Victorian parlors with cabinets full of stereo cards, families and guests gathering after supper to go through them.

Like this: a Time Machine that, sadly, only goes one way.

Stereo cards were often published in series with common themes: world travel, religious tableau, slice of life. Some were saucy. These cards would have provided a startling "you are there" experience for people who seldom went anywhere. The Holy Land and other exotic locales were popular topics. World capitals. Natural wonders. And folks sure used to love taking 3-D photos of Niagara Falls.

A typical stereo card (though not one of mine). If you have the knack for "free fusing," you can see the 3-D effect without a viewer. It's like those "Magic Eye" graphics that were popular a few years ago; don't cross your eyes, just relax them as if looking at something far away, and the two images will merge into a center 3-D image. It's a handy skill for evaluating stereo cards in the store.

I don't collect any particular themes; I just look for cards that interest me and are in good condition. It's a cheap hobby--typically $2 to $10 per card. I like photos of places I've actually been myself, as well as vistas of long-vanished life (admirals reviewing an armada of sailing ships, ranks of mounted cavalry, farmhouses on empty plains, cute little kids who all got old and died). Science is always good--one of my favorites is a 3-D image of the Moon, which really drives home the fact that it's a sphere.

If you've mastered free fusing, try this one and be dazzled.

What I appreciate most about antiques are their connections to other people's lives. I saw a fat loose-leaf photo album yesterday that appeared to capture about 20 years of a young couple's courtship and marriage, including the man's service in World War II. What was a treasure like that doing on a table for me to paw through and pay pennies on the decade for? Why isn't it with their family? Did they not have any? Or was it one of those keepsakes that would have been cherished by someone but instead just slipped away, sold off by a greedy great-aunt at the estate sale? Every abandoned photo album is a tragedy, I think.

I once found an old wedding certificate in an antique store. It had small inset photos of the husband and wife, with ornate scroll work and graceful calligraphy. They were married in a small town on the East Coast, and their surname was unusual enough that I thought I had a shot at finding a modern relative. I wrote down the info and went online to find a historical society in their county and, failing that, the town library. The librarian didn't know that particular couple but told me there were families sharing their unique last name all over the place, undoubtedly related. I returned to the antique store and, for sixty bucks, sent a little fragment of someone's history back home, where the librarian was thrilled to get it and hang it on the wall. It was the right thing to do.

Yesterday I saw a cross-stitch sampler done by a young New England girl in 1824. What would she have thought if she'd known that in 2013, a man in California--which was still Spanish terra incognita at the time--would admire her needlework? Would that mean anything to her at all? How could it possibly? But don't you wish there were some way to let her know?

Karen and I are getting to an age where the artifacts we see have gone from being things we remember in our grandparents' homes to things we remember in our parents' homes to things we actually have in our home. Crying out "hey, I bought that new!" at an antiques fair is an alarming rite of passage.

I paid $10 for three stereo cards and Karen picked up a couple of pieces of costume jewelry that looks just like the stuff we used to make fun of my Grandma for wearing but I guess is cool these days as long as you wear it ironically. What our descendants make of it is their problem.