Sunday, April 28, 2013

Not long after I arrived at USC in the summer of 1988, my new urban planning colleagues were abuzz over the just-released plans from our regional transportation agency to develop a subway/light rail system in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Along with the buzz was the lament that LA had perfectly good "red car" and "yellow car" systems which was declined in the 1950s as cars started to dominate.  On many weekends while he was at Caltech, my dad took the red car and buses from Pasadena to Orange County to help with matters on his family's farm.  I actually remember as a child taking what must have been among the last remaining yellow streetcars with my mother, going from my grandmother's apartment in Boyle Heights into Little Tokyo as my mother ran her Saturday errands in the early 1960s.  In my five-year-old view of the world, crossing the Fourth Street bridge over the Los Angeles River was a big journey. My mother let me push the button to ring for a stop once we got to First Street.

Once my urban planning colleagues got past the red and yellow car lament, they were particularly excited that at some in the distant future, funding gods being willing, one could take the subway from Pasadena to the USC campus.  That seemed unimaginable to me.  "Really, Susan, look at the plan!" exclaimed Dowell, who had just taken up residence in neighboring Altadena.  He pointed out the kaleidoscope of colored lines representing corridors proposed to be built over, oh, the next 25 years. 

Slowly, almost unbelievably, the LA subway lines have been built, and have worked up ridership.  The Gold Line which opened in 2003 changed our view of the world, linking Pasadena to downtown LA.  Take the Gold Line from Pasadena into Chinatown for dim sum!  Pasadena area USC students and employees started taking the Gold Line to Union Station and university shuttles to campus.  Then the Exposition Line opened last summer with stops at the main USC campus, 24 years after Dowell showed me the draft regional plan.  One could say LA beat projections.  So it truly is now possible to go from Pasadena on Gold Line, to the Red Line, to the Purple Line, to the Expo Line to campus.  Got all that?

Last summer with the opening of the Expo Line, I resolved to give LA public transit a chance.  The weak link, though, was getting from my house to a Gold Line station car-free.  I tried walking to a Pasadena shuttle bus stop; I tried buses to various Gold Line stations.  I gave up when it was averaging two hours one way, no matter what.

I've just regrouped on this resolve, deciding just to drive to the Del Mar station.  In peak hours, I've gotten the timing down to one hour each way, door-to-door.  Considering it takes 45 - 50 minutes door-to-door to drive, the time trade-off now doesn't seem so bad. I figure I am actually gaining an hour a day to read or do e-mails which I wouldn't have driving.

I'm trying to "go Metro" at least one day a week, two or three days if I can, when I don't have to stay on campus into the evenings with my MLS program.  It's a start.  And if anything, it feels great to be living the transportation dream that seemed fantastical in 1988.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Many times I have felt blessed to have a studious, cautious child, yet never more so than today to know that Akemi is concentrating on school work and following the directions of law enforcement and university officials to stay indoors while the manhunt for the second marathon bombing suspect continues in her Boston suburb on the Cambridge side of the river.

Hearing the ambulance sirens on Monday afternoon while in class at NEC, not far from the explosion sites, brought home the reality of the situation to her and her classmates at the beginning of this week.   A colleague said to me yesterday that she has been almost obsessively refreshing her web browser for the latest updates from Boston throughout this week.  I’m finding myself doing the same thing today, in between praying for a safe resolution as quickly as possible, to put to rest the trauma of this week.  

A few weeks ago, I saw these crocuses which were just making their appearances in Akemi’s Medford neighborhood, the first heralds of spring.  I imagine that by now other flowers and trees must be blooming beautifully, in the midst of a city which today is under siege.  I look at this photo now as a reminder to remain hopeful, while petitioning for tender mercies to flow to those who have been grievously afflicted, and for protection for all.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

When an e-mail starts out, "Not to alarm you, but. . .", you can be sure what follows will be alarming.

Wayne and Pam had been taking care of Figaro last week while I was first in Orlando speaking at a conference, and then in Boston for Akemi's recital.  Easter Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to fly out, I saw Pam's Saturday night e-mail in which she reported Figaro's head was "twisted" and his walking stilted.  She described seeing him as “startling” and later told me Fig looked like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist."

The entire flight home I worried about the condition in which I would find him.  A stray we took in (or rather, who insisted we take him in), we’re not really sure how old he is, but figure he must be at least 13 or 14 by now.  Although he has gotten clean bills of health in recent check-ups, we’ve noticed he’s definitely slowed down and has shown signs of being a “mature citizen.”

As I walked in the door, I was relieved when he came trotting up to greet me.  Thanks to Pam’s alert, I was prepared to be clinical.  Although it was nearly 1 am east coast time, I started Googling his symptoms. 

“Head tilt,” I learned, is not an uncommon phenomenon in older cats, but not without its underlying causes.  The good news scenario would be an ear infection; the not-so-good scenarios ranged from various metabolic, neurological, or immunological diseases.  I was hoping for an ear infection, but the way this household’s medical odds go, I was bracing for worse.  That night, it seemed we were both glad that he was curled up next to me under the covers.

He already was better by the time I got him to the vet, and she was able to quickly assess that he in fact has a bad ear infection.  After his battery of tests, the vet said I could take “my kid” home now.  A week later with some feline antibiotics and low-dose steroids in his system, he is acting much better, if not downright fine.  I’ve gotten quicker and neater at squirting the syringe of liquid amoxicillin into his mouth, and he seems none the wiser eating his tiny prednisone pill tucked into some kitty treats. 

Besides worrying about Figaro, I came home to the guest bathroom renovation underway and Herculean projects at the office to push forward.  This past week, I hardly had the chance to savor Akemi’s triumphal recital and being in springtime Boston. 

How like life, that the adrenaline of the current emergency pushes aside the good feelings to treasure.   Today, on a quiet, restful Sunday, I’m grateful that both of my “kids” have come through their gauntlets, and hope to get through this next week without any further alarming news.  

Sunday, March 24, 2013

As a kid, I couldn’t keep straight beans from peas.  Somehow I had gotten it confused, thinking that the little round green things were beans and the straighter green things were peas.  I was nervous about my confusion, because, after all, as a farmer’s daughter, one should know one’s vegetables.

I remember all of this because of my one-week hospital stay when I was five.  On the first night, dinner came with straight green things on the plate.  When my parents came to visit later that night, my mother asked me what I had for dinner.  I don’t remember the entrée, but remember conveniently leaving out the reference to any vegetable.  Of course she asked, with a slight frown, didn’t I have any vegetables?  I remember thinking, “Beans? Peas? Beans? Peas?”  I thought “peas” were a safe bet, 50-50 odds being good enough for me. 

The second night, the dinner plate had the little round green things.  Why couldn’t I have carrots, I wanted to know.  Or broccoli, maybe.  I knew broccoli.  Sure enough, my mother asked me that night what I had for dinner.  (She would later ask me this after every law firm interview – what nice restaurant did they take me to, and what did I order.)  And sure enough, she asked me what vegetable they served.  “Peas,” I replied, re-thinking that maybe the little round ones were peas, after all.  And I figured if I were wrong the night before, I’d be right tonight.

This logic was lost on my mother.  Frowning more than the night before, she said, “But you had peas last night.”  “Uhh, beans, maybe they were beans.”  I felt found out.  I didn’t know enough to be worried about the pneumonia in my lungs; I remained worried about my green pod dyslexia.  As the week wore on, I was relieved that my mother developed a repertoire of other questions to ask me.  Or maybe she just figured that this hospital just served a lot of peas, and left it at that. 

Snow peas do well on my trellises in the spring, and tonight’s harvest ended up in chicken vegetable soup.  Beans do well on those trellises later in the summer, and this year I’m trying scarlet pole beans, which I started from seed in pony packs, ready to transplant when the snow peas run their course as the weather starts to warm up.  Akemi returned last night to an incoming snow storm in Boston, but it was 75° this afternoon in Pasadena. 

Good thing I know which is which now. 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Like the fashion industry, church choir directors think two seasons ahead. 

My irises are blooming, and we have yet to put on this Easter’s program, but already it is Christmas around my dining room table and piano.   As I play through sample copies of various arrangements, I sort them into piles: “forget it,” “maybe – come back to it,” and “show Janet,” our organist/pianist.  Janet and I have worked together for many years, and we share programming sensibilities. 

She and I also have been fortunate to have been part of a close set of professional and professionally-trained musicians in the Pasadena Stake.  Somehow we’ve always managed to have a pretty deep musical bench.  Our ward in particular has had among us a soprano with LA Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, a violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a conductor of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus.  We’ve had any number of piano majors move in and out, and our stake right now has two Doctor of Musical Arts students at the USC Thornton School of Music. 

Our church has a great music heritage, what with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (which we affectionately call the “MoTabs”) and all, but the reality is, it is a struggle to maintain a standard of high-quality music in our church services and events.  We are all volunteers, so singing or lending instrumental support comes on top of everything else everyone is busy doing in their lives.  We may have our stand-out talents, but most of my ward choir singers do not read music, have not ever had any vocal training, and have not ever sung in any other choir.  Yet the goal is to sound as though everyone is a stand-out talent. 

So those of us here in Pasadena who bring our musical training to the metaphorical stable, like the Magi with their gifts, have had a “one for all, and all for one” attitude.  We constantly cover for one another, which includes taking time off of work whenever there is a funeral, to sing, play the piano, or direct the congregational hymns, occasionally for a family member of someone we may not even have known. 

Janet and I, and others, have talked about this over the years, and we think that perhaps our biggest church musician responsibility has been to raise children who themselves have become church musicians, trained not only in what to do – the music competencies-- but also in how to do it – to serve unconditionally.  At Janet’s request, I taught her daughters piano about 20 years ago; one of them has become a beautiful organist in her own right.  Many in our ward have hosted Akemi in their homes to have a “practice audience” before a competition or recital.  Just the other night, Akemi, home on spring break, played through a few pieces for her recital next Saturday night for one ward family, and we got to hear their son and daughter play their upcoming recital pieces, as well.  We all had such fun, and it was the kind of “pay it forward” evening I cherish.

One Sunday morning a few years back, Janet, Deanne, and I stood in the back of the chapel, watching our daughters Shannon, Allison, and Akemi rehearse a number together.  We put our arms around each other’s shoulders and told ourselves, “Look at that; we did it.”  Our children are taking their places not only as musicians, but also as music administrators and leaders in their own right. 

Tonight in between Akemi practicing Bloch’s “Baal Shem” and her other recital pieces, she has been taking breaks by plunking away at a few hymns, the results of NEC keyboard technique classes.  I’ve rotated in on the piano bench, reading a few more Christmas pieces at a time, and am proud I can ask her what she thinks of an arrangement. 

It’s Christmas in March, not only because of the advance seasonal choir planning, but because the Magi have brought the heritage of musical training to the stable. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

My dad set his spoon down, still regarding the hollowed-out grapefruit half on the kitchen table in front of him.  “Tonari’s tree is good,” he said, as much to himself as to me.  “I think I’ll go get me one.”

Tonari is what he and my mother often called my “Uncle” Mits, our neighbor with whom we have been bonded by land.   He and Mits periodically compared notes about how their trees were doing on their adjacent lots, former orange groves.   We didn’t have a grapefruit tree, and my dad liked having one in the morning.

Later he showed me the label on the tree he brought home from the nursery.  It was a then-new hybrid, developed as I now know, at UC Riverside, a cross between a white grapefruit and a pomelo called oroblanco.  The pomelo features make it large and very sweet; oroblancos are true to their “white gold” name for eating.

Once my dad’s tree started bearing fruit and he started giving them away, his became the grapefruit of choice among our family and friends.  After you had tasted one of my dad’s, the smallish tart ones off the large tree in my front yard just didn’t hack the breakfast scene any longer.   During the season, we would bring his grapefruit home from Peralta Hills to Pasadena, while my own plentiful but outclassed grapefruits found their way into marmalades, chutneys, and candied peel.  

When I landscaped my back yard three years ago, I put high priority on planting three semi-dwarves of exactly the citrus varieties I wanted: a navel orange, a Meyer lemon, and, yes, an oroblanco grapefruit.  The lemon started bearing fruit the very first year.  Then last year was the first year the orange kicked in.  I was excited to see my first oranges ripening on the tree, when one morning, much to my dismay and annoyance, I watched a squirrel scamper off with first ripe one.

Now this spring for the first time, my own oroblanco is crowded with fruit, as well as with buds, ready to pop.  In a few days, my backyard will have the fragrance I love of citrus blossoms.  Maybe this is why my taste in perfume and lotions have gravitated to citrus and floral scents.   

At the two-week mark after a treatment, I’m feeling much better.  I can tell I’m back to normal again, as I’ve regained interest in eating something besides variations of chicken soup, in cooking at all, in poking around the garden, now in daylight-savings evening light, to see what I could collect for dinner.  Some arugula, kale, parsley, mint, and grapefruit segments, tossed with lemon olive oil?  Some baby beets sautéed with oranges?  Some “Bright Lights” Swiss chard and sugar snap peas in (more) soup or over pasta?

After a couple of weeks of feeling crummy in body and soul, I’m happy to be happy with spring springing, and the accomplishment of having my own oroblanco tree.  I know; a grapefruit tree might not do much for you, but it does something good for me.  

Thursday, February 28, 2013

As I was web-surfing tonight to see what was going on with sequestration, I learned that today was Rare Disease Day.  Apparently a number of world-wide organizations designated today for various activities to raise awareness for the so-called “orphan diseases,” those ailments which are “orphaned” from research attention because of the relatively small number of people they afflict.  In the U.S., a rare disease is defined as one that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans.

When it comes to “rare,” well, I’ve got “rare.”  The estimated number of Waldenstrom’s cases in the U.S. a year is only about 1,500.  Treatment approaches for Waldenstrom’s essentially have been extrapolations from treatments for multiple myeloma and more common lymphomas.  Too bad that this effort fell on the eve of the sequestration deadline.  What I hear in my university hallways is that all federal funding of scientific research is about to shut down, which isn’t going to help any of us.

I had hoped that after Tuesday’s treatment, I would be done, at least for a while.  Based on Tuesday’s lab results, though, my USC doctor reluctantly agreed with the Dana-Farber Thanksgiving-time recommendation that I stay on this course for maybe three more treatments, so nine more months, at least. 

The IgM level did drop, but the rate of the drop seems to be slowing down.  This isn’t unanticipated – I’ve read in the literature about various possible reasons why.  One theory is that treatment gets the “low hanging fruit” but ultimately can’t get to the most resistant WM cells which have managed to hide out deep in the bone marrow.  Others relate to whether there are WM stem cells at mischief.  It seems inevitable that I’m facing the “diminishing returns” scenario.  In any event, I felt much better today than yesterday, but still don’t feel like anything ambitious.

After Bing died, I discovered in the grocery store the “Mitford” series in paperback – a collection about a lovable Episcopal priest in a country town in North Carolina with a cast of townspeople dealing with one another’s travails and heart-warming joys. It was good, clean escapism for me, and I clung to it even though Akemi would routinely come into my bedroom and ask, “So how are things in Mitford tonight?”  I think it’s time to stop reading about sequestration, and head for Mitford instead.  

P.S. The narcissi growing outside my bedroom window.