Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the category “TOWN CRIER”

20 Mar 2013
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A Pop-Up Heritage Garden (Town Crier, March 2012)

narcissusIn mid-January on my street corner a carpet of green shoots transforms each year into hundreds of waving narcissus blooms – the maximum bloom cresting during the coldest days of winter.
Someone at least 30 years ago planted some narcissus bulbs in the orchard which formerly marked the end of the street. It may have been the original owner of the orchard. It may have been the first owner of the house built in the housing development which replaced the orchard, or the second green-thumbed owner who planted over a dozen different varieties of fruit trees in the place of the original apricots. It may even have been my father, who was a city kid who did his best to become a green-thumb gardener for over forty years after buying the house and land in the late 50’s.
Somehow the bulbs survived my father’s regular roto-tilling of the orchard, the bull-dozing of the fruit trees when our house was built next to my parents’ in the 80’s, the re-landscaping, covering with new soil, and planting of a rose garden after the new house was built.
One summer day as I was picking roses, I saw a bulb lying on the ground. Wondering where it had come from, I picked it up. Underneath it was another bulb. I picked that one up too. The hollow where it had been was lined with more bulbs. It was like the classic Dr. Seuss book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins; each bulb I picked from the hollow revealed more bulbs beneath and around the first one. I had discovered a bulb mine!
Apparently the bulbs had been dividing and multiplying under the topsoil until they had run out of soil; then the bottom layers began pushing the others upward until the top-most one was simply lying on the surface. I fetched an old pair of panty hose and began loading bulbs into it. When I had taken all the bulbs that seemed loose in the bulb mine, I threw a couple of shovels-full of dirt into the hollow to encourage the bulbs that were left, and hung the bulb-filled stockings on a nail in the garage.
When the rains came to soften the dirt, I planted the bulbs in the bare space around the oak tree on the corner. I didn’t know I was supposed to imitate nature and scatter them randomly, so I set them out in orderly rows, counting as I planted. By the time the stockings were emptied, I had planted 250 bulbs.
The next year I spotted a bulb lying on the ground in a different place. The new bulb mine yielded about 150 bulbs, some of which I shared with my sister in Davis and my co-workers in San Jose or planted in pots as Christmas gifts. The leftovers went to another bare space beyond the oak tree, and along the parking space in front of the rose garden.
Over the next years as the bulb mines appeared and disappeared, I began offering bags of bulbs to my neighbors up and down the street. My Adopt-A-Bulb campaign has become almost an August tradition.
Last year I only harvested about 50 bulbs from the newest satellite mine, and I and my neighbors are running out of bare spaces in our gardens. But in January, when the narcissus are all blooming together, I think about the long-ago gardener who planted the first bulbs, hoping to make the world a little bit more lovely. Though it only lasts two weeks, it is a wonderful heritage.

Posted in Memoir, TOWN CRIER and tagged ,
19 Sep 2012
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21st Century girl meets 19th Century technology

(published in Los Altos Town Crier Aug 10, 2012)

I have traditionally hosted my grand daughter for a week during the summer.  At thirteen she has grown into quite the young lady.  I tried to do some make-believe like we use to do with the stuffed animals in her room and she reproved me with “I’m not a little girl anymore, Grandma!”  I knew this was true when I went up to check on her comfort and saw she was no longer sleeping with her Panda Bear, but instead with her Samsung Galaxy S3. So 21st century!

Still, when I suggested a sewing project she was all enthusiasm.  I had a few dress patterns left over from my crafty days, and she picked a nice simple wrap-sundress (Jiffy!  One piece! Lots of straight seams! ) We had a good time at Joann’s Fabric and Crafts picking out the fabric – she finally settled on a red gingham check with a contrasting red polka-dot calico.  The gingham check turned out to be very helpful as it provided lots of straight lines to sew along.

We pinned carefully and she was in charge of the cutting, making sure that all the “Cut on line of fabric” lined up perfectly with the gingham check.  She had a little difficulty at first with the sewing machine. (“It won’t go!  And then it goes too fast! It’s too loud!  I can’t do it!”)  There was a minor meltdown on the couch.

That night an invitation arrived – instead of staying with us through Saturday morning, she could go up on Friday to visit her uncle and aunt in San Francisco for an overnight.  Cool!  But we would have that much less time to finish the dress.  She looked at me, squared her jaw,  and said “So, no more freaking out?”

I nodded.

“OK.”

The next day she screwed up her courage, sat down at the machine, and just did it.  From then on, anything I showed her (fastening an end seam with a back stitch, ironing the ties, turning a corner, doing a hem, hand-sewing a facing) she observed, absorbed, and did.

Maybe it was lucky that I was the one to make the stupid mistakes (cutting along a fold that wasn’t supposed to be two pieces, sewing a pocket one check higher than its mate) and she was the one to correct them.  Certainly it was wonderful that when she wore the dress for the first time to the camp she was attending during her stay, her new friend at camp said “That’s a really cute dress!” and she was able to say “Thank you. I made it myself – with a little help from my Grandma.” So 19thcentury!

It was a great week for both of us.  My granddaughter cleaned up my smart phone and showed me some new tricks I could do with it.  She got us to Skype.  We ate her favorite food, took her to see Brave on the big screen, enjoyed the things she did in camp, and watched our favorite old movies on the small screen.  (So 20th century!)

But the best was The Dress.  19th century met 21st century, and everybody won.

Posted in Memoir, TOWN CRIER and tagged
21 May 2012

Our Tax Dollars at Work ( Los Altos Town Crier May 1, 2012)

On Tax Day this year I found myself flying into Dulles International Airport.  There was some turbulence, but our landing under the direction of the FAA-trained traffic controller was silken smooth.

As we taxied to the gate, we passed the space shuttle Discovery, still piggy-backed on its 747 shuttle waiting for enshrinement at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum near the airport.

The next day we spent several hours in the museum, guided by a volunteer docent brimming with anecdotes and information about the jet planes, rockets, satellites, and space exploration – so many achievements that were only made possible by a wartime or Cold War-time national commitment.

That afternoon we proceeded through the springtime electric green east coast countryside on US routes 15 and 30 to Gettysburg and its marvelously evocative National Battlefield. The landscape is meticulously preserved as it appeared in Matthew Brady’s historic photographs taken only a few days after the battle almost 150 years ago.  Again, park rangers were available at major points to tell an audience of school children, Boy and Girl Scouts, parents, and other tourists about what happened here that formed our national consciousness.

We had previously visited the Park Department’s Visitor’s Center which offers both panoramic and microscopic information about the politics, military strategy, soldier life and every other aspect of the battle that one could imagine. The famous Cyclorama 360 degree painting is there along with a short film about slavery that will bring a tear to the most jaded eye.

The next day we took my centenarian mother-in-law, who raised her family in Gettysburg, to visit her favorite spots on the battlefield.  Thanks to the improvements mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, we were able to wheel her to almost all the most nostalgic spots both on the battle field and on the campus of Gettysburg College where she had worked for many years.

My mother-in-law never held any job title higher than Executive Secretary to the college president, but her contributions through her working career have provided her with competent and caring medical coverage in the thirty-five years (so far) since her retirement.

We stopped off at the post office to mail some Gettysburg history  and other used books that we had picked up; since we were in no hurry to get these the cost was just under $8.00 to ship the 12”x12”x12” box across the country.

Throughout our trip we stayed in close touch with my mother and two children via Internet email (formerly known as ARPANET, developed and still maintained by the US Defense department).

Safe air travel, flight technology, space exploration, highways, postal service, national heritage parks, handicapped access, secure old age, Internet communication….

Folks who complain about your taxes – What part of this heritage, these services would you not want to support? I’m happy to pay my fair share for all these things and many more that I could never accomplish on my own.

Posted in Airports, TOWN CRIER, Travel and tagged , , | Leave a Comment
05 Apr 2012
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Triumph of the Garage (Los Altos Town Crier, April 4, 2012)

My mother told me awhile ago about my great-great-grandfather’s workshop, where every nut, bolt, and screw had its own special compartment, every tool had its own particular hook.
This awoke a hunger in me. Unlike many of my neighbors, we have always been able to park two cars in our two-car garage, but negotiating the way from the car to the hall door was hazardous – successive layers of cleaning out the trunk in order to go to the car wash, unloading from a camping trip, shifting material from an old office to a new one, and miscellaneous craft supplies had gradually encroached upon the shelving and floor and sink to the point where we could barely exit the cars once parked.
Once I started to work at home, “organize the garage” made it onto my weekly todo list. And there it sat, for week after week. “We’ll do it on the next rainy weekend” I told myself. It has been one of the driest winters on record. “We’ll do it when it’s warm enough to leave the door open so we can see what we are doing”. It has been colder than normal for weeks on end..
Finally something snapped. I went out and measured the space. Then I drew a plan, with height and depth and width of shelves needed. (Turned out not to be completely accurate, but that’s another story).
Having a diagram in hand seemed to trigger a switch in my husband’s brain: “Aha! A reason to cruise all the home improvement sites on the Internet! Awesome!” Before I knew it he had checked out wire,, wood, aluminum, PCV , and pre-formed plastic shelving at OSH, Loew’s, Home Depot, etc., and was presenting me with options: “Do you want any cupboards? Do you really need a 22” inch wide counter – that’s an odd dimension. You want 24” deep shelves, but comments on the Internet say things tend to get lost at the back – if we get taller units we could get by with 18” deep, don’t you think?”
Wow! What had I unleashed? Next thing I was swept into the car for a trip to the nearest home improvement mecca, where the most recommended shelving was in stock.
The chosen shelving was the prefabricated plastic kind where you tap the pieces in place with a rubber mallet and a block of wood – my husband set to with gusto. There must be something atavistically thrilling about pounding things into submission – the shelving was assembled in no time.
Now the hard part – emptying out the existing storage, purging what was not needed. and reloading.
The”existing storage” consisted of two rough units knocked together from planks and covered with peeling contact shelf liner – I had salvaged it from a curbside when we first moved into the house. I optimistically put it out on the curb again for free-cycling along with an extra soldering iron, out-moded hot glue gun, macramé flower pot holder with ceiling hook, totally unused paint roller and pan, furniture gliders, wall shelving hardware and support (with shelves) and other redundant or outmoded items. All disappeared within hours except for the storage units, which my husband eventually had to whack apart and deliver to the local landfill.
After a weekend of merging and purging ,we’re done. The garage is still not up to my great-great-grandfather’s standard: we don’t have a container for every nut and bolt or a hook for every tool, but at least we have dedicated shelves. (Who knew we had so many different kinds of lightbulbs?)
And finally – a floor! We can drive into our garage and get to the hall door without danger of tripping over anything!
Could the attic be next?

(Published in Los AltosTown Crierpril 4, 2012


http://www.losaltosonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42739&Itemid=55

Posted in Memoir, TOWN CRIER and tagged
07 Mar 2012

A Community of Kindness

A community is more than streets, stores, schools, and the people who occupy and use them.  A community is built from countless threads of connection, woven of myriad small and large gestures of kindness and caring.  Here are some recent examples of how a community is constantly being renewed in our own town:

At a concert being presented by a group of local high school students, the director of the group took time in his introduction to acknowledge the presence in the audience of two people who had helped him early on – one a volunteer who chaperoned one of the early trips made by the group in its first day, another a former school administrator who had worked with him early in his career at the high school.

Why was this important? Of course, the pleasure given to the two audience members was considerable.  More importantly, the young people who are now part of the singing group  were made to think about the past  history  of the group, and the people who had contributed to its success.   Moreover, they could see that those early supporters are still in their audience, still supporting them.  Community comes from continuity.

An octogenarian friend of mine parked her car at the Ranch lot and walked across the Foothill expressway to attend an event at the church on the opposite corner.  This section of road has no sidewalk, and she slipped and fell on the gravel aggregate.  (Our pretensions of being a rural community do have their drawbacks.)   A young man whose truck was stopped at the light saw her fall. Rather than continuing on his way, he went through the light, made a U-turn in the Rancho lot, and came back through the light to  stop and make sure my friend was all right and able to continue on her way.   He didn’t know her, but he went out of his way to make sure.  Community comes from caring.

Another friend is a student in a painting class for cancer survivors, taught by a local artist who volunteers her time.  This teacher went to see the production of “The Pitmen Painters” which appeared recently in Mountain View and thought it would inspire her students.  She  wrote to the producer,  told him about her class and asked whether a group discount could be arranged for her students.  The producer responded by sending her 20 free tickets for the class.  Community comes from kindness.

There are many areas where we disagree with our neighbors, many topics which are contentious, and unfortunately many harsh words said. Fortunately, for every one of these stresses which frays the fabric of community, there are actions like those above which strengthen and reweave the fabric which supports us all.

(Published in Los Altos Town Crier March 7, 2012)

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11 Feb 2012

The Power of Yes

Years ago, living with my family in California after completing  my master’s degree, I received a call inviting me to fly east for an  interview for a job on the East Coast.  I was already in the final stages of negotiating a job down in San Diego, so I turned down the invitation. My mother, a very positive force, scolded me for turning down the invitation and the free ride to New York – what harm could it do to check it out?  I ended up accepting the East Coast job.  In the first few days on the job I met a colleague in my new department who eventually became my husband.  What would my life have been if I hadn’t said “Yes”?

Much later, now living with my husband and children in Oakland CA, I received another job interview invitation, this time to work for a small software company across the bay in Mountain View.  Although we were considering moving, the Peninsula was not on our short list, being too expensive.  However, my then job was clearly going nowhere, so I accepted the invitation to interview just for the practice.

At the same time, my parents were discussing subdividing their acre of land, and invited  my husband and I to buy half the parcel and build a house next to them.

I ended up accepting the job, we agreed to the land purchase offer,  and I commuted for a year while we built a house on the land where I had grown up.   Where would we have ended up if I had not said “Yes” to that job interview and land buy?

Once established in our new home, I resolved to say “Yes” to any friendly overtures from my new neighbors.  My mother took me to a friend’s annual Mother – Daughter Tea, where I met a woman about my age.  She mentioned that she loved to exercise every weekend at the local community college, and gave me her business card in case I would like to join her.  To her surprise, I called her up, and she became one of my closest friends over years of regular exercise together.

Last year I was visiting a friend who teaches at Monterey Peninsula College.  One of the many foreign students in her class had invited her to come visit and perhaps do a training course for her business: training  women to lead trekkers in Nepal.   My friend was planning to do a two-week trek as part of the visit and said in the casual way friends do, “Why don’t you come with me?”  To our mutual astonishment I said “Why not?” and because I said “yes” I enjoyed one of the most enthralling adventures of my life.

So I’m giving you fair warning: If you make me an offer, extend a casual invitation, suggest some joint activity – watch out!   I’m very likely to say “yes” - just to find out what will happen next.

Posted in Memoir, TOWN CRIER and tagged | Leave a Comment
10 Feb 2012

Letter from Tokyo – May 2011

When my colleague Kai and I arrived in Tokyo at the end of May, 2011, I almost forgot to look for  after-effects of the earthquake and tsunami – from the windows of the express train from Narita Airport the rice paddies seemed so normal, poking up 6-inch green shoots in even rows inside their regular little square pools.

The first hint of change was at the little Family Mart shop down the street from my usual hotel in Shinju-ku.  The widened aisles and rearranged shelves could not  hide the lack of goods for sale – only four varieties of yogurt,  none of  Kai’s  favorite ice cream treats.  We wondered if the shop was facing hard times and going out of business;  as we walked back up the street  it hit us  that supply chain problems probably caused the scarcity, since the northeast area supplies much of the dairy and agricultural products for the rest of Japan.

The next morning we met our colleague Vivek for coffee at the nearby Starbucks.  As we watched the passing parade of salarymen exiting the subway and heading down the mall to their offices, Vivek pointed out another  more revolutionary  change.

“Do you notice something different? They’re not wearing ties.”

Once pointed out, the changed was startling – At least 50% of the young men going by had abandoned the formal uniform of dark suit, light shirt, and dark tie.

“It’s a government official request. They call it “Cool Biz”.  It’s to save the energy use for air conditioning since the reactors are out of commission.”

Environmentalists had tried for several summers  to popularize the “Cool Biz” approach to dressing but it never  caught on much, not even to the extent of getting the salarymen to switch to a light-colored suit.  But with the nuclear reactor problems,  going tie-less to help save energy is viewed as  almost a patriotic duty.

We found a third change as we headed for the escalator to get to the pedestrian bridge to our office across the street – it was shut down and arrows directed us to the adjacent stairs.  As part of the energy conservation effort, one in three of Tokyo’s escalators and elevators areshut down, unless there is no alternate access for the handicapped.

In our office we saw that the younger cubicle-bound salarymen had universally adopted the Cool Biz standard.  The managers and customer-facing salespeople showed resistance, however;  perhaps the tie is a badge of rank for them which cannot be easily discarded.

Tomii-san, my Japanese partner, told me that these and other conservation efforts have cut energy use in Tokyo by up to 40%.

For the short term, I thought this showed a heroic effort of unity in the face of disaster.  Then I began to wonder about possible long – term effects.

Will younger Japan go back to the formality of ties when the crisis is over?  Would the experiment with casual dress undermine the Japanese sense of formality and propriety over the long term?

Once  companies have realized the savings of reduced energy use, will they ever re- activate those escalators  and elevators? Will the smoothly automated Japanese way of life erode under the twin pressures of environmentalism and cost savings?

Thirty  years after the California drought of 1977, I still don’t let the water flow as I used to while I brush my teeth.  Will the conservation lessons of the Tsunami stick?

Posted in Tokyo, TOWN CRIER, Travel, Tsunami 2011 and tagged , , | Leave a Comment
10 Feb 2012

21st Century Time Travel

As a child I dreamed  of time travel, sparked by science fiction classics  from Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov.  A few months ago, I actually did it.

Over a period of four weeks, I  bounced back and forth between the 21st century, the 1950’s, the 1930’s, and even further back to eras where the automobile and even the wheel had no part in daily life.  No mad scientist, no magic or mystery – just the reality of 21st century air travel co-existing with life in countries where “development” lags decades or centuries behind that of Silicon Valley.

From our spanking-new San Jose Air Terminal B, I flew first to LAX – and immediately found myself in the early 1960’s– Los Angelese International Airport with its trademark flying saucer and neon entry sculpture, offering air travelers an inter-terminal air shuttle by bus every 20 minutes or so.  The shuttle alternative – a concrete sidewalk.  As architecture, LAX is a curiosity;  as an entry to our country for almost  12 million people a year, it is a bit cringe-worthy.

Nine hours later, I debarked from my time machine, an Airbus A340, smack in the 21st century at the gleaming  Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok.  Despite flooding that threatened to devastate the capitol only 28 miles away, the Bangkok airport worked flawlessly, with gleaming LED displays pointing the way along moving sidewalks to the connecting flights.  We relaxed comfortably in the Orchid Lounge before boarding our next time machine.

Only three hours later we emerged in  the 1940’s – a small airport with rudimentary radar, roll-up steps to allow passengers to disembark, and a quick walk across the tarmac to retrieve baggage from the cart. Then out to a cacophony of competing taxi drivers begging for business – no organized taxi queue here, and then on into the maelstrom of foot, bicycle, pedicab, motorbike, bus, and auto traffic that is Kathmandu.

A few days later we had left all thought of wheels behind, as we trudged up the foothills of the Himalayas along with donkey caravans, goat herds, and small wiry men carrying incredible loads of rice, food, cookware, clothing and other items for sale or barter, as well as porters carrying baggage for tourists such as ourselves.

We saw grain being threshed by oxen driven over the harvested sheaves so that their hooves would loosen the grain in the stalks.  We saw women separating the grain from the stalks by tossing trays of harvested sheaves in the air over and over and letting the wind blow the chaff away little by little.  We stayed in guest houses where the water for bathing was heated over a charcoal stove and delivered in a kettle to the common bath room.  We were traveling as fast as our feet could carry us – about  6 miles a day max. We had been transported back to Biblical times.

But wait – in that guest house where the hot water for bathing had to be heated on the stove, the children of the house were watching Nepalese “Sesame Street” on a flat-screen TV in the corner of the dining room next to the charcoal-burning stove.  And that peddler carrying an entire Wal-Mart’s worth of kitchenware – isn’t he listening to music on his iPod as he strides along?  Us Sci-fi veterans know that if you introduce an anachronism from another time into the past, history will veer off into unforeseen directions.  What will the end of the 21st century look like for Nepal?

Posted in Nepal, TOWN CRIER, Travel and tagged , , , | Leave a Comment
10 Feb 2012

Where are the screaming girls?

Joshua Bell – hotter than Justin Bieber!

Long shining hair falls across the musician’s face as he sways to the music he is creating.  His tight-fitting khaki-colored T-shirt is sweat-drenched from his exertion.  He holds his instrument as if it were an object of passion, eyes half-closed.  The back-up group struggles to  match his intensity.

There are plenty of teen-age girls in  the audience – why aren’t they  screaming, fainting, calling out his name?  Because this is not Justin Bieber or Enrique Iglesias – this is Joshua Bell, the former teenage violin prodigy, belting out Glasunov’s violin concerto in A minor, opus 82 in open rehearsal with the San Francisco Symphony  (October 5, 2011).

So why are there no screaming groupies in the classical music audience?  Here are some possible reasons:

1: The Instrument Effect

Unlike Gene Simmons of Kiss and others like him, Joshua Bell does not end each concert by smashing his violin.  It is  as famous as he is in certain circles – the 1713 Gibson ex Huberman Stradivarius, twice stolen , recovered  the second time after a deathbed confession by the thief, and purchased by Bell and his  backers for something around $4 million.  The history (and the price tag) elicits a certain amount of respectfulness not conducive to screaming.

2. The Costume Effect

As a rule, classical musicians don’t get to wear cool duds.  If I had seen Joshua Bell in concert instead of in open rehearsal, his muscular shoulders and narrow hips would likely have been effectively masked in dowdy concert wear – those white-tie and tails were great for Fred Astaire, but in those days the sweat wasn’t supposed to show.

3. The Grandmother Effect

I realized after a casual conversation with the adjacent well-dressed rehearsal-goer that most of the teenagers in the audience on a Wednesday morning in October were music students field-tripping with their teachers and chaperones.  The non-pubescent portion of the audience were mostly silver-haired retirees of a grand-parently or even great-grandparently demeanor.  If any of the teenagers had shown any inclination toward swooning, one of the grandmothers would inevitably have whipped a vial of sal volatile out of her bulging reticule and brought the young lady to her senses immediately.

I have worried, along with other classical music aficionados, about a decline in popular interest in the classical repertoire.  I suspect that some of the hand-wringing is over-blown – there are few among the younger generations of listeners who cannot recognize the orchestral themes from  Star Wars or Harry Potter as easily as they identify music by Rush or the Moldy Peaches.  There is so MUCH music available today that orchestral music is logically a smaller percentage of this larger iPod-fueled universe.   If a groupie fan-base is needed to energize this genre I propose:

  1.  Add some bling to the band.  Maybe you don’t want to stomp the Stradivarius, but does EVERY string instrument have to be BROWN?
  2. Ditch the ties and tails.  Maybe not leather pants and sequins,  but didn’t we all love Lenny Bernstein’s white turtleneck and Count Dracula capes?
  3. Unbutton the audience.  Reserve the boxes and balcony for retirees, and save the orchestra area for  the mosh pit.
  4. Allow social media to do its magic.  What’s with the “Turn off your cell phones, no pictures” mantra?  A few viral You-tube videos and real-time Tweets about what a hot presence Joshua Bell is in concert, and your symphony attendance issues would be resolved!

And don’t forget to sign me up with the groupies!

Posted in Events, TOWN CRIER | Leave a Comment

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