JOURNAL 2015: History of One Man

Description

Journal 2015: History of One Man is a history of one year in San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton’s life.  Religion, Sports, the Universe, the Environment, Philosophy, American History, Politics, Self-Publishing—all these topics and more are included in Sutton’s one-year journal.

Thursday, January 1, 2015 – History of One Man

We live in a world where we human beings have devised TIME.  It started way back in B.C.E.  We live now in C.E. times.  Does the universe have TIME?  It’s hard to realize that the planets that revolve around their stars have time, unless there are conscious beings on those planets.  Only conscious beings would think of TIME.

We should thank our lucky stars that we’re conscious of living on a small planet that revolves around a star we call the Sun.  All the planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun.  That’s order, isn’t it?  How did it all begin?  What started this vast universe that I hear is expanding at unbelievable speeds?  Scientists say it was the Big Bang that started it all.

But let’s come down to Earth.  I’m just another human being on Earth known as Joe Sutton from San Francisco, married to Joan, with one stepson Sol and one son Ray, a man who wouldn’t be caught without a pen and a piece of paper in his shirt pocket, a man who thinks of his life on this small speck in our Milky Way galaxy, let alone the universe.  We humans are so small, yet so big.  We communicate, we feel, we think, we see, we philosophize, we worry, we fear, we explore, we exult, we cry, we create, we kill, we build, we destroy.  We humans have choices.  There’s something about us that gives us the freedom to choose who we want to be in life.  We can be principled or sell outs, we can lie and cheat or we can feel compassion and love for others.  Each of us is unique in his or her very own way.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone will ever read my yearly journals on my website, or on Amazon Kindle or Smashwords.  Is it possible that someone might read it?  Yes.  Will it happen?  Probably not.  But who knows; maybe my journal will someday be used for historical purposes—for instance, what was it like for this one man to live in the last half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century?  What was he doing, what was he thinking?  He’s a part of the history of the human race.  He is a history of the human race.  Just read his yearly journals and you’ll find out the history of one man out of the 7 1/2 billion others who presently inhabit Earth at the very beginning of 2015.

But we humans are not the only species living on Earth.  There are dogs, monkeys, elephants, ants, spiders, fish, whales, bears.  There are different plant species.  And where does all this life on Earth come from?  It comes from a bunch of elements like oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc., along with water and sunlight.  Our planet is filled with life.  The future, what will it be like ten, twenty, a hundred years from now?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I try to live as best as I can with my family and friends, as well as with my thoughts and actions.

Friday, January 2, 2015 – We’re Still Teenagers

I sit at my desk with only a half an hour left before midnight strikes.  TIME.  I saw a bunch of football games on TV yesterday and today.  Yesterday I watched the Oregon-Florida State game to see which team will play Ohio State in the College Championship Game on January 12.  My alma mater Oregon beat Florida State 59-20 because Florida State turned the ball over four times in the third quarter.

It’s been cold and dry lately.  Clear skies.  The thing is, we need rain.  I think of water whenever I turn on a faucet, either at home, at the YMCA, or in a restroom somewhere in the city.  “Oh, rain, dear rain, come tomorrow and for a whole week like you did in early December.  Come and drench us with your life-giving fluid, for we’re having a drought in California.”

What if someday we come across other thinking beings?  How are we going to get along with them when we can’t even get along with ourselves on this planet?  We’re always fighting each other, always killing, there’s always a war or wars going on.  Why do we keep warring against one another?  I believe, as the astronomer Carl Sagan once said, we humans are in our adolescent stage.  In other words, we’re still teenagers!  We have a long way to go before we become mature enough to prevent over-population, to distribute food and water where needed, to live in a clean environment, to live free and equal, and to live in harmony with each other.

Sunday, January 4, 2015 – Who Am I?

“Okay, Mr. Sutton, who are you?” asks my friend Charles Lewman in an e-mail.  “We know the stats of your age, weight, height, even your blood type.  That doesn’t tell me who you are, it only tells me what you are.  Who are you?”

To answer Charles’ question, I, Joe Sutton, strive to do the best I can in whatever I’m doing.  It could be writing as best as I can, it could be being the best husband, the best father, it could be listening as best as I can to my friends, it could be doing water aerobics at the YMCA as best as I can.

Who am I?  I like neatness and cleanliness.  I want to be strong for as long as possible in my life.  I see how small I am in this vast universe I live in.  I believe in democracy and equality.  I believe in sharing the load with whoever I’m with.  I have worries, thoughts, ideas, fantasies.  I’m lazy at times, only because my energy level is not up to par.  I love to watch athletic events when my Bay Area teams are involved, also when the University of Oregon, my alma mater’s football team, is involved.  I love reading the “Week in Review” section in the Sunday New York Times.  I love walking with my friends, lighting up a joint, and philosophizing with them.  I like to keep my car in good running condition.  I do my best to be aware of other people’s feelings.  I respect whoever I’m with until they don’t deserve my respect anymore.  I do my best to be fair, honest, and trustworthy.  If I set a deadline for myself, I like to meet it.  I like to learn something when I read a book of fiction or non-fiction.  I’m blessed to be a conscious human being.  I love all types of food.  “I yam what I yam,” said Popeye.  That’s right, I’m just me and nobody else.  I’m unique, just like everyone else in the world is unique.  I’m a positive-thinking person, much more than a negative-thinking person.  I don’t like war, imbecility, bullies, or greed.  I love beauty in all its forms, such as the beauty of a sunset, the shape of a woman, a musical composition, a movie, a book, or an athletic skill.

Thursday, January 8, 2015 – Why Do I Write in This Journal?

Why do I write in this journal?  One, it’s good practice for me to put words and sentences together.  Two, I get writing ideas from writing in my journal.  Three, writing in my journal is a history of my time here on Earth.

Today I had to drive to the Courthouse to pay a bail fee of $25 for having a taillight that doesn’t work.  Now how the hell am I supposed to know when my taillight isn’t working?  The cop took advantage of me and gave me a ticket when all he had to do was give me a warning.  I got pissed off at the clerk for having to pay a fee when my wife Joan got stopped for the same reason last year and was only warned to get it fixed.

I bought a few items at Costco, located a few blocks from the Courthouse.  It never fails, but I always end up getting a hot dog and coke at Costco, all for $1.50 plus tax.  A great buy in this day and age.  Prices keep going up in this world, but so far the price for an all-meat hot dog and coke at Costco hasn’t changed.

Sunday, January 18, 2015 – The Marijuana-Monkey Story

I was sick for a whole week and am now recovering.  I wasn’t laid up in bed, I was just weak and had a bad cough.  The cough still lingers.  Life was taken out of me for a week.  All I did was rest, read, work at my desk, and watch TV.  No exercise at all.  Today was the first day I got outside for a 10 minute walk.

I finished a draft of the book of the Giants winning three World Series titles in five years that I’m going to e-mail my editor Don Ellis.  I need him to go over the manuscript before we decide on a title and whatever else is needed before it goes to the printer.

Above my desk is a card that Joan’s friend Delia Moon sent me last week.  It’s a picture of a writer at work with a saying printed in large letters, “WRITE DRUNK; EDIT SOBER.”  This saying is attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but I Googled it and no one really knows who said it.  It’s very similar to what my friend Tony Kutner once said to me:  “Write with fire, revise with flame.”

My next project after the baseball book will be to work on a collection of short stories.  I’m thinking of calling it The Bar of Soap and Other Stories.

Before I forget, I want to write down The Marijuana-Monkey story, about when I was 25 in 1965.  I was at a party in Los Angeles.  Pot was circulating amongst us.  I was smoking it for the first time and asked my friend Nate Wirt, “How do you know when you’re high, when you’re having a trip?”  Nate led me to a large window and said, “Do you see that tree?”  “Yes,” I said, looking at a large, leafless tree in the host’s backyard.  Nate said, “Do you see a monkey in that tree?”  I looked at the tree for a few seconds and, yes, I saw a monkey in it.  That’s when I found out what two puffs of marijuana can do to the brain.

Oregon, last Monday, lost the College Football Championship game to Ohio State.  Ohio State’s quarterback Carnal Jones and running back Ezekiel Elliot starred in trouncing Oregon and quarterback Marcus Mariota 42-20.  Oregon was actually favored to win the game.  Oregon has never beaten Ohio State, going back to when they first played in the 1958 Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.  Oregon, a team that wasn’t even ranked, a huge underdog, lost to Number 1 Ohio State 10-7.  It was one of the reasons why I wanted to play for Oregon, because they fought hard against a much superior opponent and almost pulled off a major upset.  Oregon’s coach, Len Casanova, recruited me in 1960 after I played two years as a running back at Los Angeles Valley Junior College.  I didn’t do well at Oregon.  I injured my knee early on and that was the beginning of my not getting much playing time.  But I stuck it out for two years, and here I am, a man who sticks to his writing projects until he finishes them.

Today Joan and I and her brother Jim Bransten had lunch at Fior ‘d Italia, a restaurant around the corner from Jim’s condo in North Beach.  Jim has an extremely bad case of Parkinson’s.  It took him a minute or two to put food on his fork and to guide into his mouth.  It was torture for Jim and torture for Joan and me to watch him eat.

Thursday, January 29, 2015 – Hip Surgery

Today I came across two writing quotes:

“On the dullest day imaginable, I can always find something to do besides writing.  I have innumerable choices.  I can read, I can watch television, I can pick up the phone and call somebody, I can hit the refrigerator—or I can decide instead to sit at a typewriter, pick words out of the air, put them in order, and spread them on the page.  Unless I consistently choose to work, I’m not going to get books written.”—Lawrence Block

“There is always something else to do, so if you really mean to write, you have to ignore that something.”—Ellen M. Kozak

Well, I have a lot of somethings to do, but I’ve chosen to write instead of calling bookstores about getting paid for any of my books that have sold and to see if they need more copies of my books; instead of taking my $200 donation to the YMCA; instead of buying a bottle of wine at Trader Joe’s to take to Steve Dessy’s poker game tonight; and instead of doing a bunch of other things in and around the house.

I look out the window of my office and see another sunny day in San Francisco when it should be raining cats and dogs.  There hasn’t been a drop of rain this whole month.  Not a drop.  The sun has been out every day.  The temperatures have been in the mid-60s.  It’s been beautiful weather but it’s a sign of another year of drought in the Bay Area and California.  We have to conserve water as best as we can.  I do my showering mainly at the YMCA when I go to my water aerobics class, as does Joan.  I conserve as best as I can by turning on the shower, getting wet, turning the shower off, soaping down, and then rinsing off.  Most of the men who take showers at the Y don’t conserve.  They keep the water running, even though there’s a sign in the showers that says to conserve water.

Don Ellis, my friend and editor, was supposed to drive down with me to Steve Dessy’s house in Half Moon Bay for the poker game, but he called this morning about having to take his wife Lizzy to Kaiser because she’s in great pain with two bad hips.  Lizzy should have had her operation two years ago, but was fearful of being operated on.  I know exactly how she feels.  It took me a couple of years to decide to have my first hip operation, and three years after that to have my other hip operated on.  Lizzy is thinking of having both hips replaced in one fell swoop.

Joan is due to have a hip operation on February 18.  She asked me this morning if she should spend two weeks in a rest home to recuperate so as not to be a burden on me.  I told her absolutely no.  She’ll be able to get around with a walker or crutches a day or two after the operation.  I just want her to be strong enough after the operation so she won’t have to depend too much on me.  That’s why I keep telling her to come to the water aerobics class with me.

She’s all set now.  She has a cane, a walker, crutches, a raised toilet seat, a stick with a hook to put on and take off socks, and a grabber/reacher to grab things off the floor or up high.

Saturday, February 7, 2015 – My Son Ray

Today is my son Ray’s 34th birthday.  He received his B.A. degree in psychology at San Diego State and his Master’s degree at San Francisco State.  Between getting his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he worked as a sound engineer.  Today he’s a counselor at Balboa High School in San Francisco and does sound work gigs on the side.  He is a compassionate man with a strong, sturdy mind.  In high school he was a great defensive back in football and a competent second baseman in baseball.  It was a patella that tore loose from his right knee in a baseball game that ended his athletic career.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015 – Preface for My Giants Book

Don Ellis wants me to write a preface for my Giants book.  I worked on it all day.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

After the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, it took them 53 years to win their first World Series in 2010.  Incredible.  Their next title came in 2012.  Miraculous.  They became world champions again in 2014.  Magical.  It’s very rare in professional baseball, or any other professional sport, for a team to win three titles in such a short span of time.  I have combined all three of the Giants’ World Series seasons into one book.  I’m sure my observations will bring back a flood of memories for Giants fans, both young and old, on how the Giants, underdogs each year, reached the pinnacle of the baseball world three times in five years.

What makes this book truly different is that it’s interwoven with the story of how baseball has influenced my relationship with my son Ray, from the time he was a Little Leaguer through middle school.  It shows how the game of baseball, ever since its very beginnings, has cemented relationships between fathers and sons, and some daughters, too.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015 – Religion

I just finished reading a book by the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti, a man who was against all organized religions.  He believed all religions were totally false in telling people how to live.

Like J. Krishnamurti, I too am against all organized religions.  A good example of why I believe this is what the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordeleone, said in a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle.  In it he said he opposes abortion, any kind of contraception, homosexuality, artificial insemination, and same-sex marriage.  Instead of thinking for himself, instead of living in today’s world, instead of having compassion for others, Cordeleone, without thinking, goes along with Catholic doctrine.  This is what religion does to people:  it creates unthinking followers.

Religion.  Most of the people on Earth believe their religious belief will keep them out of hell and deliver them to heaven in the afterlife.  Billions of people actually believe there’s a heaven and a hell.  Come on, people, wake up, when we die, we die.  That’s it.  The End.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015 – Front Cover of My Giants Book

Last week I found a photo for the front cover of my Giants book.  Luckily a friend of mine at the YMCA, Garrett Griffin, told me to Google “copyright-free photos.”  Of all the photos I looked at of Giants’ pitcher Madison Bumgarner (the hero of the 2014 Series), money was involved, with one exception.  Thank goodness that one exception was copyright-free.  I e-mailed Dirk Hansen about his Bumgarner photo and asked if I could put it on the front cover of my book.  He answered back by saying, “Go right ahead.”  I told him that his name, the name of the photo, and his e-mail address would be included on the copyright page of my book.  I also promised to send him six copies of the book.  Great, I had a picture I really liked and sent it to my editor Don Ellis and graphic designer Zac Rymland to see what they thought.  They liked it.  Here’s the final version of what Don and Zac put together:

Monday, March 23, 2015 – Copies of My Book and the Solution to End Hay Fever

I’ll be printing 300 copies of my third Giants book this week.  I made a mistake with my second book, The YEARS the Giants Won the Series, by printing a 1000 copies.  I chose that many copies because my first Giants book, The Year the Giants Won the Series, was a smashing success.  Five months ago I had 600 copies of The YEARS in my garage, so I started giving it away.  I gave 400 copies to the Blood Centers of the Pacific to give to their donors.  I believe I have around 150 copies left as of this writing.  I lost my ass printing so many copies.

I found out how to stop hay fever in its tracks.  Weed is the solution.  I was having a very bad day yesterday and took a couple of tokes and voilà, no more hay fever.  Thank goodness I now know how to stop the incessant sneezing and runny nose if and when hay fever hits.  I’ve had maybe two or three bad days this spring that have taken the life out of me.  That was about to happen yesterday when I nipped it in the bud by taking a couple of puffs.

Three months out of the year I’m vulnerable to anything that has mold in it—such as mushrooms, wine, raisins, cheese, and salad dressings.  I have to stay away from those items during the months of February, March, and April.  When May comes around, I’m a free man for the rest of the year.  My wonderful wife Joan, who is steadily improving after having hip surgery almost five weeks ago (she’s now walking with a cane and doing very well), was the one who discovered my reaction to mold.  She asked me one day many years ago, after I started sneezing and my nose wouldn’t stop running, “What did you just eat, Joe?” and I answered, “I had a handful of raisins.”

Tuesday, March 24, 2015 – Rational vs. Irrational

What’s in the news today?  Killings, wars going on in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, crazy people killing innocent people, police killing unarmed Black people, guns and more guns, and to top it off, the National Rifle Association wants more people to own guns.  Guess what, people are buying into their propaganda.  This country is going gun crazy with people killing people every day.

The right-wing thinking in this country is driving me up the wall.  Here I think I’m a rational person and that the irrationals are the gun people, the anti-abortionists, and those who want to treat women, Black people, Asians, homosexuals, and Latinos as second class citizens.  Also, the irrationals don’t believe climate change is going on.

What I’m saying is, there will always be a divide in this country between rational and irrational, left and right, liberal and conservative.  Always.  It will never end.  It will go on for as long as there’s a human race.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015 – Hot Off the Press

I received a call from Medius Printers today.  San Francisco Giants:  A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014 is hot off the press.  I’m going to pick up 300 copies tomorrow at their plant in San Jose.  I’ll hit every bookstore in the Bay Area, and a few non-bookstores, such as Lefty’s, a sports collectors store in Burlingame.  Lefty’s was my best customer for my second Giants book.

I’ve gone to my water aerobics class three times this week.  Joan has gone twice, which can only be helpful for her after having hip surgery six weeks ago.  Which reminds me, today is the 38th anniversary of our first date—April Fool’s Day 1977.  We’re a very lucky couple.  We have the means and the freedom to follow our own passions—me to write and Joan to study Greek and Latin.

My latest Giants book will be my 13th.  If I knew I was going to write that many books when I began my writing career back in 1969, and have them published by either a publisher or myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.  But my books just keep coming, due to my editor and book shepherd, Don Ellis.  Don reads my writings and gets ideas on how we can make a book out of those writings, and then he guides the books to publication.

My son Ray came by the house today to pay me the monthly $300 he owes me for loaning him the money to buy his 2009 Toyota Camry.  Because he’s paid me every month on time for the past two years, I told him I was going to do him a favor by deducting $2000 from the $6300 he owes me.  He’s now down to $4300, which he can pay off in 14 months.

Thursday, May 7, 2015 – Go World!

I just finished watching the Giants lose to the Miami Marlins, 7-2.  So far this season they’re doing poorly.

Whether it’s baseball, football, or basketball my interest picks up if any of my home teams are doing well.  I will rant against a team if it’s having a poor season.  But if any of my teams are doing well, it gives me hope, it gives me life.

There are wars going on in the Middle East and Africa.  Russia and Ukraine are at war.  There are wars going on all over the world.  How can we live in a better and more peaceful world?  I believe we have a long way to go before that ever happens.  We must cut down on population growth if we humans are to become a more peaceful species.  We have to improve upon a cleaner environment.  We have to recycle Earth’s raw materials, such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt.  If we can do those things, we’ll have a better chance of surviving on this planet.

Go Giants!  Go Warriors!  Go 49ers!  Go World!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 – Everything I Write Should Be Published

Writing a book is the first thing a self-publisher does.  He then gives it to his editor to go over it.  After many revisions, the manuscript is ready for publication.  It then needs a graphic designer, and for the last several books I’ve published, Zac Rymland has tended to that.  Zac works with Don Ellis formatting the text of the book and putting the front and back covers together.  Zac then e-mails the finished product to Medius Printing in San Jose.  Within a week they have printed the number of books I think I can sell and I drive down there to pick them up.

For my previous Giants book, The YEARS the Giants Won the Series, I had Medius print 1000 copies.  I hired a publicist, Isabella Michon, for that book and paid her $2500 a month for three months.  I also doled out a lot of money for editing, graphic design, printing, and to Bradley Charbonneau, who manages my website.  I spent a lot of money on The YEARS and it turned out to be a dud.  In short, I’ve spent a lot of money publishing my own books and have gained back very little in sales.

So why do I keep writing and self-publishing?  One, I don’t like to send my work to agents and publishers to get rejected 100% of the time.  Two, I can publish it myself, from 250 to 1000 copies, and run the whole show from start to finish.  That would be great, except I have to pay for it, and almost every book I’ve self-published, I’ve spent more than I’ve taken in.

But I love writing.  Why have my books sit in a drawer for no one to read?  I’m a writer.  Everything I write should be published.

Saturday, May 16, 2015 – Life Is Unfair

I’m reading My Struggle, Book One by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard.  He writes totally from his experience.  What I’ve read so far, he writes about his family and school in his mid-teens.  We both write about our past and present lives.  He surely has his own style, as I do mine.  He’s hit it extremely big with four of his My Struggle books.  Me, I haven’t hit it big with any of my books, except my first Giants book.  He probably sells more books in the U.S. in one day than I’ve sold in all the years my thirteen books have been on the market.  One day!  The guy is rolling in popularity, while I sit here at my desk in total obscurity.  Is that fair for me, a writer of 45 years, unknown to the world, while a man 28 years my junior has hit it big?  Well, no, it’s not fair for him to be more famous than me, but it’s a reality.  Life is unfair.  I think I’m as good as any writer that ever lived.  Why then haven’t I made it big in the book world?  Is it that my writing is so poor that I don’t deserve any type recognition?  I, of course, surely don’t believe that.

I’ve read other unknown writers, and I find that they’re all pretty damn good.  What is it that makes the light shine on one writer while 99.9% of other writers are hidden in the dark?  What is it?  Timing?  Luck?  Ability?  I would say all three.  I’ve written an essay about this, “You’re As Good as Hemingway,” that will be included in my new story collection The Bar of Soap and Other Stories.

Monday, May 18, 2015 – Walter Bernhardt

Working outside is one of the great handymen of all time.  Walter Bernhardt.  He’s fixed a few things for us in the past, such as installing a toilet upstairs, a kitchen faucet, and a bathroom faucet downstairs.  He took out the sliding shower door in the downstairs bathroom for us.  Today he’s working on repairing a long wooden fence between our next door neighbor’s backyard and ours.  It might take him two or three days to complete the job.  It’s going to cost approximately $1000 that Joan and I will share with our neighbor’s, Jennifer and Chris Gantz.  Walter has to put in four new posts on their side.  We have five posts on our side.  It should make the wooden fence much sturdier.

Anyway, Walter tells me he writes in his journal on a daily basis.  He’s interested in writing and writers and we’ve talked about that a few times.  Walter told me he’s reading the Journals of Spalding Gray.  Gray, a monologist, became famous for a movie he made:  Swimming to Cambodia.

Thursday, May 21, 2015 – The Royal Flush

I’ve been preparing all day for tonight’s Royal Flush poker game.  I went to Costco to buy two roasted chickens, potato salad, beer, wine, salami slices, chips, crackers, and cheese.

The Royal Flush is made up of eight of us.  Jerry Lipkin, who works his ass off as a lawyer for those who commit the screwiest crimes, like prostitutes, men flashing their nude bodies, and wife abusers.  To summarize his clientele, I call them “the dregs of society.”

Alan Blum has a dark, rainy cloud hovering over him.  Two things are going against him:  Parkinson’s and he’s always broke except for the monthly social security checks he receives.  Alan never saved money while working as a mechanical engineer.  Right now he lives with seven or eight other people in a house in Concord that is being foreclosed.  He’s called me a couple of times, hinting but not coming out and saying, “Joe, can I stay at your place since you have a room and bathroom downstairs that’s not being used.”  But Alan, even if he had money, would gamble it away because he’s addicted to playing the Lottery.  He still plays it, thinking he’s going to hit it big.  He actually won $5000 one time, which made it worse for him because it gave him an incentive to keep playing.  So Alan, with his Parkinson’s, his gambling problem, and being destitute is living on the margin.  I’ve loaned him money a few times over the years, the last loan being $5000 that he couldn’t pay back.  That was the end of my “loaning” Alan any money because he’d probably gamble it away.

Don Ellis just called and said he’s parking his car outside.  Don, of course, is my editor and book shepherd.  Steve Dessy manages the Lexus of Serramonte dealership.  Ralph Yanello owns and runs an Internet legal service called LawRoom.  George Krevsky owns George Krevsky Art Gallery in downtown San Francisco.  Harry Fish, a former accountant with Transamerica, is now retired and plays golf three or four times a week.

Don just rang the doorbell.  Gotta go.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015 – Short Story Reading

Last night at Folio Books in Noe Valley I read a short story of mine.  Ten of us writers and poets were told to read no longer than three or four minutes.  Most of the group took advantage and went over the limit.  Some read for 10 or 15 minutes.  They were enthralled with their own words.  I, too, am enthralled with my words, but I didn’t go over the limit.  I stuck to the 3-4 minute rule, as did the organizer of the event, Kathy Dalle-Molle, and two others.

The story I read was about an incident that happened several years ago at Indian Springs Spa in Calistoga with Joan and me.  It’s called “Key to My Heart,” about Joan having trouble opening our cottage’s door three times and me having to get up three times from reading a book to open the door for her.  Anyway, there were over 50 people at Folio Books last night.  It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever read in front of.

 

Stan Lipkin is due to come to the house around 7 o’clock tonight.  He lives in Thailand and is married to a Thai woman named Tui (Tu-ee).  We haven’t seen each other in four years.  He left on a bad note last time, when he wanted to invite a total stranger over to the house, a transsexual, and Joan and I forbade it, not because the person was transsexual, but because Stan found his/her name on Craigslist and who knows what’s going to happen when someone is invited over to maybe have sex, which I’m sure was Stan’s intention.  So Stan left on a sour note and now he wants to use our place as a base while he travels to Idaho to visit his son Steven and a few other places in the Bay Area.  I have to make it clear to him that we don’t want any strangers in the house if neither of us is here.  Joan is leaving for Chicago on June 1, and I’m leaving for Chicago on June 16.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015 – The Warriors

Joan will be leaving for Chicago in six days.  I’ll be leaving on June 16, the day before her birthday.  Then Sol, Jang, their three-year-old son Olby, Joan and I will drive to a cabin on the shore of Lake Michigan in Michigan.  Michigan is an Ojibwe word mishigami, meaning “large water” or “large lake.”

The Warriors are about to start playing the Houston Rockets in game five of the Western Conference Finals.  The Warriors are leading the series three games to one.  Stan Lipkin is calling me from the living room.  I’ll finish this after the game ends.

Five hours have passed and I am happy to say that the Warriors have won the Western Conference Championship.  They beat Houston 104-90.  It was a rough and tumble game, a nip and tuck game up until about 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, a grind-it-out game with a lot of mistakes by both teams, especially one player on the Rockets, James Harden, their superstar, who had something like 13 turnovers.  The Warriors, for the first time in 40 years, will now play in the NBA Finals.

It’s now on to the biggest test of all to face Cleveland with LeBron “King” James and an excellent supporting cast.  The big question is:  Who’s going to guard LeBron?  I have said, as of last week, that Draymond Green would be the man to guard the practically unstoppable LeBron.  It should be an interesting matchup.  The only thing the Warriors have to worry about is Klay Thompson.  Last reported, he had concussion-like symptoms.  He took a knee to his head in a collision with Houston’s Trevor Ariza.  His ear was bleeding and he had to sit out of the second half.  Here’s hoping there’s no internal bleeding.

Friday, May 29, 2015 – The Giants

The Giants’ Angel Pagan is my choice, so far, for the team’s MVP this season.  People in San Francisco don’t seem to recognize the contribution he’s made in the field and with his bat.  Everyone else, even Matt Duffy, our new, young starter who took over for the fat, slow-moving Casey McGehee at third base, gets more attention from the media and the fans than Angel does.

Hunter Pence is back from a broken wrist he sustained in spring training.  The infield, made up of Matt Duffy, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik, Brandon Belt, and Buster Posey are all under the age of 28.

The TV camera is now showing Steph Curry with his wife, father, and mother sitting in the first row along the third base line, all four wearing Giants caps and coats.  Steph is the toast of the Bay Area, now that he and the Golden State Warriors are going to begin playing in the NBA Finals next week.

The Giants are leading the Braves 2-1 in the top of the sixth.  Tim Hudson is pitching.  It’s unusual that only one run has been scored on him in six innings; he usually gives up four or five runs at this point in the game.

Which brings me to the aura of the Giants.  If they win tonight they’ll take over first place from the Dodgers.  They’re the reigning World Series champs.  I think they’re much better than last year, what with Joe Panik playing a whole season at second base; Pagan is healthy; Belt is healthy and hitting like a demon; Brandon Crawford is hitting and leading the team in RBIs and is still one of the best fielding shortstops in baseball; Matt Duffy has taken over third base from Casey McGehee; Buster Posey is hitting and fielding with excellence; Nori Aoki is hitting and fielding well in left field; and Hunter Pence, just back in the lineup, is doing very well.  The Giants are a solid team, leading the National League in hitting and their defense is one of the tops.  This could be another great year for them.

Saturday, May 30, 2015 – Weight

My weight is around 202-204.  Not good.  I remember writing in 2013 that I weighed 188 pounds.  That was my perfect weight.  Now I weigh 14-16 pounds more.  I just can’t get below 200 for some reason.  Actually the one and only reason is that I eat too much.  And here I wrote a bunch of notes about losing weight that I refuse to work on until I hit my target of 190.  All I want to do is to lose 10-12 more pounds, which I’ve been trying to do every day since I got over 200 pounds.  Weight, it’s been the bane of my existence since I turned 50 or so.  I gotta lose, I gotta do better than I’m doing now.  My appetite is ravenous, though.  Why?  Is it that I’m nervous, stressed, or what?  I know I have a lot of things to do during the day, a hell of a lot of things, and I try to get to them but put most of them off, which is a sign of stress in my opinion.  So what am I gonna do about this weight of mine?  I just have to cut down on what I eat.

Friday, June 5, 2015 – My Brother-in-law Jim, the Warriors, and an E-mail Letter

Before I go to Kaiser Hospital to see my dying brother-in-law, Jim Bransten, I want to first write this entry.  This morning Joan had to take an emergency flight back from Chicago, where I picked her up, dropped her luggage off at the house, and she drove her car to the hospital.  She had left for Chicago on Monday, June 1, for the whole month of June, but now that her brother is on his deathbed with an acute case of Parkinson’s and dementia and an infected gash on his head because he fell in his bathroom, she flew back this morning.  I just talked to her and she’s getting mixed messages from Jim:  One minute he says, “I want to go home,” and the next minute, “I want to die here in the hospital.”  What does one do in this situation?  I say leave him at the hospital and let him die there in peace.

 

The Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers started their seven game NBA Finals series last night and the Warriors, in front of a roaring crowd won the game in overtime 108-98.  Cleveland’s point guard, Kyrie Irving, hurt his knee badly in overtime.  If he can’t play the remainder of the series Cleveland is bound to lose, barring a miracle.  Irving was spectacular last night and without him Cleveland is doomed, even though LeBron scored 44 points.  It’s too bad that this series might end early, now that Irving is out of the picture.

Everyone’s talking about Andre Iguodala today, on radio and in the papers, who came in and played a flawless game on offense and, more importantly, on defense against LeBron.  He has extremely long arms which makes his defense stand out above all others.  Steph Curry scored 26 points, Klay Thompson (thank goodness he was able to play after sustaining a concussion last week) scored 21 points.  It was a total team effort, whereas Cleveland’s team depends too much on LeBron.  Harrison Barnes played his steady, reliable self.  Andrew Bogut was big on the boards.  Mo Speights, otherwise known as Mo Buckets, came into the game and scored 8 quick points for the Warriors.  He was a shot in the arm for the Warriors when they needed it the most.  The Warriors are at full strength, Cleveland isn’t.  They’re missing Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving.  I hope the Cavaliers can make a series out of it, but to look at it realistically, they’re doomed because of the injuries to two of their big scorers.  And so that’s a quick summary of last night’s game that Stan Lipkin and I watched, rooting the Warriors on.  Both of us were really into the game, twisting and turning and shouting while watching it.

I wrote a letter about my third Giants book and e-mailed it to a couple of hundred people last week.  Here it is:

Dear Friends,

If you’re a Giants fan, or know a youngster or oldster who is, my latest Giants book, San Francisco GIANTS: A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014, will bring back a flood of memories of their three World Series seasons.  Interspersed throughout the book is the story of how baseball has influenced and cemented my relationship with my son Ray from the time he was a Little Leaguer all the way through high school.

Here’s a snippet from Game 5 of the 2014 National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the St. Louis Cardinals:

Thursday, October 16, 2014  …The score is tied 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth. Michael Wacha is pitching for St. Louis. At bat is the Panda, Pablo Sandoval…who singles to center.  Bruce Bochy replaces the rotund Sandoval with pinch runner Joaquin Arias.  Hunter Pence…flies out to right.  Brandon Belt…walks.  Men on first and second, one out.  Travis Ishikawa…has just hit A WALK-OFF HOME RUN.  The Giants win the pennant for the third time in five years!!!  They will now play Kansas City in the World Series!  Whoopee!!!

There are four ways you can purchase my book: (1) at any bookstore in San Francisco, (2) by sending me a $15 check without having to pay tax or postage, (3) by reading it as an e-book on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and (4) by ordering it from my website through PayPal.

By the way, with Father’s Day coming up, San Francisco GIANTS: A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014, would be a great gift.

Warm regards,

Joe Sutton

2349 Funston Ave.

San Francisco, CA 94116

415-665-7628

www.joesutt.com

Guess what?  Not one person responded to my letter.

Sunday, June 7, 2015 – Jim Bransten

Yesterday, June 6, 2015, 6:25 p.m., my brother-in-law Jim Bransten died peacefully at Kaiser Hospital.  His oxygen mask was taken off two hours before he passed away and was given heavy doses of morphine, intravenously and by a needle, so as to make his passing as peaceful and uncomplicated as possible.

I thought the whole Kaiser staff did a great job of following Joan’s directions of Jim not having to experience any pain during this process.  He surely wasn’t in pain.  His in-between breathes were getting longer and longer and then all of a sudden there was no breathing.  The end for Jim, who suffered through 15 years of Parkinson’s.  Jim, only a few years ago, had back surgery, he had no teeth, he ate very little, he loved sugary items such as ice cream sundaes and cookies and all the wrong things for healthy eating.  He was unconscious in his last four or five days.

I was there with Joan in the last minutes of his life.  Sol and Ray had gone out for something to eat and missed Jim’s last dying breath.  Jim will now be cremated by the Neptune Society and sometime in the near future we will hold a memorial for him at the condo he lived in for the past 15 years with his trusty caretaker Steve Gilbert.  Others who took care of him and slept at his condo were Maria Villa and Cesar Gonzalez.  Jeannie Carson, who also took care of him, was an alcoholic and very unreliable.  But Jim wouldn’t/couldn’t get rid of her because they had once been a couple in their younger years.

I would every so often go over to Jim’s place (he couldn’t move well because of Parkinson’s) and we’d light up one of his newly rolled joints and talk philosophy and history.  He was well-versed in both.

Jim was a lawyer but very rarely practiced it.  He was, for most of his life, confused and lost and had abused his body with heroin.  He was left a trust fund by his mother, Sue Bransten, where he received a certain amount every month to pay the mortgage, to buy food, and to pay those who watched over him.  Jim was 71.  Joan says that ever since he was born he had health issues.  Convulsions and temper tantrums.  He and his mother hated each other from the get-go, which means he never got the love he needed at an early age and it made him dependent on others for the rest of his life.

I witnessed a death for the first time in my life.  Jim just all of a sudden stopped breathing, due to heavy dosages of morphine.  It’s quite a wonder drug for those about to die.  That’s how Joan’s Aunt Norma died in New York many years ago, with heavy doses of morphine.  Man, if I’m ever bedridden, that’s the way to go, unconscious and peacefully.

I just wrote a letter to Virgin America to cancel my trip to Chicago this month.  We are now going to concentrate on holding a catered memorial for Jim at his place, either in a week or two.  Steve Gilbert, Maria Villa, and Cesar Gonzalez will be staying at the condo until they have to move out.  We don’t know what will happen to the condo.  It’s in the trust’s name and Don McCubbin, who is responsible for taking care of these things, has to decide what to do with the condo, to either sell it or rent it out to my son Ray.  Who knows what McCubbin will decide?  The man is away with his wife on the high seas nine months out of the year.  Where does he get all his money to sail around the world?  We know he got thousands, maybe millions, from Sue Bransten.  Sol mentioned yesterday that he might have been paid in the millions and is now using it to see the world.  McCubbin will never divulge how much he was paid by Sue Bransten.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015 – The Warriors and the Giants

We’re preparing to have Jim Bransten’s memorial at our house on Sunday instead of at the condo where he lived.  Ray is going to get the food and drinks for maybe 25-35 people.

The Warriors and Giants.  The Warriors are taking precedence over the Giants this week because they’re playing the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals and have fallen behind 2 games to 1.  The Warriors have trailed almost every minute in the past three games and I hope they’re learning that that is not the way to win the championship against LeBron and Company.  They have to set the tone in tomorrow’s game, just like Cleveland’s been doing in the past three games.  They were lucky to win the first game in overtime.  They supposedly have more talent than the Cavs, but it’s the force of LeBron that is the main element why Cleveland is one game up on us.  I’m sure the Warriors are hustling, but it doesn’t seem like they have the killer instinct and the will to take that extra step that the Cavaliers have been taking.

Funny thing:  Jerry Lipkin informed me, as I was watching the basketball game last night, that Giants rookie, Chris Heston, pitched a no-hitter against the Mets last night.  It wasn’t a perfect game, in that he hit three Mets batters.  Way to go, Mr. Heston.  We’re only one game behind the Dodgers in the West Division standings after almost 60 games have been played.  We have another 102 more games to go before we find out which teams will play in the postseason.  I’m not taking notes this season because it’s futile for me to write about the Giants.  My books aren’t selling.  Why?  The people in San Francisco are used to the Giants winning and are spoiled.  Me, too.  They keep winning and winning.  My third Giants book is not doing well.  We’ve been overdosed with Giants books over the past six years.  So I’ve decided not to write about them as much as I’ve written about them in the past.  What’s the use?  My book won’t sell if I do write about them.  The first Giants book I wrote was a success.  The second book, of two Giants World Series years, didn’t do well.  The third book, of three Giants Series, has gotten me zilch in sales.  I’m tired of hustling it.  I haven’t even called Marty Lurie to be on his radio show, although I have plans to call him after the NBA winner is decided.  The people in the Bay Area are too much into the Warriors right now.  It could be their first title in 40 years.  I hear this NBA series is the most watched of all time.  I’m surely into every game, every minute, and I feel for the Warriors.  Why?  It’s a Bay Area team.  They’re good and exciting, except for the past two games they’ve lost, one in overtime and one by five points.

I weighed 202 at the YMCA today.  I still have to lose 12 pounds.  I know how to do it.  It’s very simple.  Eat less.  Today Barbara McCormick was the water aerobics instructor.  Boy, she works us hard.  I’m so tired right now I could go to sleep.

Sol left for Chicago this afternoon.  Stan Lipkin just got back after being away for a day and a night at Harbin Hot Springs, a place where he used to work.  He’s been here, on and off, for almost two weeks.  He doesn’t bother me too much.

Thursday, June 11, 2015 – Einstein

As I was listening to NPR radio this morning, I heard a report that 27 of Albert Einstein’s letters will be up for auction.  I heard that in one letter Einstein said something about God—that it’s childish to think there’s a personal God.  I write about what Einstein said because I’ve believed for a long, long time that God has nothing to do with our personal thoughts, prayers, or wishes.  Here’s a quote of his I just found on the Internet:

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one,” he wrote to a man who corresponded with him on the subject twice in the 1940s.  “You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist….I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

Here’s another Einstein quote:

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.  No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.  These subtle interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text.  For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.  And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.  As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.  Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Right on with those two quotes.  I wonder if Einstein believed as I do that God is another word for Energy or Great Force.

I’ll be leaving for the East Bay to meet with Don and to play poker tonight at his office, which is next to an English-like pub/restaurant where we can watch the beginning of the most important game for the Golden State Warriors this season.  Why?  Well, they’re down two games to one and if they lose tonight they’ll have a much steeper hill to climb than if they win and tie this seven game series at 2-2.  Being down 3-1 will be a killer.  They have to win.  I feel they’ll break out of their funk and take it to the Cleveland Cavaliers and show them what they’re made of.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.  Jim Bransten in another day or two will be cremated.  Joan wants to take his ashes to northern California, near Redding, where Jim spent his summers as a young boy.  Joan knows the name of the camp, something with Trinity in it.  That’s what she wants to do, spread his ashes in the forest near the camp where he spent many a happy summer.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015 – My Friend Stan

I’m back.  I should be “back” every day, but no, I always find something else to do or I’m interrupted by my wife or a phone call or our friend Stan Lipkin.  I know Stan tries to be considerate of Joan and me during the day, but sometimes he’s a nuisance as I sit in my office.  He’s been here, on and off, for the past three weeks, and every time I’m sitting at my desk he has a question or favor to ask of me.

Stan and I are both 74 now.  He lives in Thailand, is married to Tui, they built a house in Pai and they survive on Stan’s monthly social security checks.  Stan came to the U.S. on this trip to say goodbye to a good friend of his in New Mexico who has Parkinson’s, except his friend is in such bad condition that his wife won’t let people visit him.  So Stan, after coming to California, is seeing old friends in the East Bay, in the North Bay, and in the Gold Country (Nevada City).  He just came back last night from a trip to see his lone surviving son Steven in Boise, Idaho.  His other son Randy committed suicide.  Stan is not in the best physical condition.  He came to our house with a bad cold and a prostate problem.  He’s not his usual spry self.

And that’s the story of my friend Stan Lipkin, who has been a nuisance to me while staying here.  He’s got all the amenities:  free transportation with my Clipper card, a bedroom and bathroom of his own downstairs, Internet use, heat, a couple of pieces of clothes I’ve given him to keep, and free meals.  I think he’ll be going to Nevada City tomorrow for a few days.  When he gets back he’ll be off to Southern California to stay with his nephew until his flight leaves for Thailand, which is a killer flight of 18 hours or thereabouts.  Stan says this is his last trip to the States, although he said the same thing a few years ago when he came to the States because his second son Randy committed suicide.  But this time Stan means what he says:  “It’s the last time.”  His home is in Pai, Thailand, and that’s where he’s going to spend the rest of his life.

Suicide.  I received an e-mail from the L.A. Times columnist, Bill Plaschke, today.  He wants some information on Bruce Gardner, who committed suicide on the pitching mound at USC in 1971.  I knew Bruce in junior high and high school and wrote a story about him and sent it to the sports editor of the Times, Mike Hiserman, hoping he would publish it, but Hiserman passed it on to Bill Plaschke who only wants to find out a little more about Bruce because he’s going to write an article about the baseball draft that took place last week.  I’m awaiting Plaschke’s call.  I told him in an e-mail that I’d be home during the Warriors-Cavaliers Game 6 tonight.

This past Saturday I sat in the lobby of the Blood Centers of the Pacific and signed my second Giants book for any donor who walked in.  Only a couple of donors turned down a free copy of The YEARS the Giants Won the Series.  I think I inscribed my name in about 25 books to the wonderful people who donated blood that day.

On Sunday, June 14, Joan and I hosted a memorial for her brother Jim, who passed away on Saturday, June 6.  Jim had a very bad case of Parkinson’s.  We weren’t sure if anyone would show up, but it turned out that about 35 people came.  Jim’s and Joan’s cousins, old friends, and his four caregivers.  Ray, our son, ordered and brought the food and drink from Whole Foods.  Three of Jim’s closest friends, Bob Harmon, Chris Pray, and Jeff Rothman, spoke eloquently about him, telling stories about Jim that no one ever knew.  Jim Bransten was a wild and crazy guy is what we all learned.  He was also a very generous person.  He always fought for the underdog, his car driving was reckless, he was a major part of an improvisational group called the Pitschel Players here in San Francisco.  Jim’s downfall was his addiction to heroin in his mid-twenties.  That screwed up the remainder of his life (he was 71 when he died), although he earned a law degree from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, while he was being treated for heroin at the Menninger Clinic.  He had to take methadone the remainder of his life.  He was very dependent on his parents’ wealth.  Their money paid for Menninger, Washburn University, his condominium in North Beach, and for his four caretakers:  Steve, Jeannie, Cesar, and Maria.  All had and two still have problems of their own.  Jeannie with alcohol, Cesar with drugs, Steve got over being a street person and an alcoholic while taking over the brunt of Jim’s caregiving, and Maria, who’s a little off at times.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015 – Joan’s Birthday

I’m tired, even though it’s early in the morning.  I didn’t go to my water aerobics class today because I need a day off to figure out the direction I’m going.  And what direction is that?  To do several things that are on my desk asking to get done.

I have to write a few columnists at the Chronicle about my being a self-publishing author.  I want to put The Bar of Soap and Other Stories on Smashwords and Kindle.  I have to call Marty Lurie at KNBR-AM now that the Warriors have won the NBA championship, to be on his baseball show and talk about my third Giants book (we’ve talked about the other two when they came out).  I have to send stories out.  Those are the things I would like to do.

What I need is a vacation to get away from the same schedule I’ve been following for many years now, which is to wake up, eat breakfast, go to the Y, come home, eat lunch, work at my desk, eat dinner that Joan cooks or brings home, watch a baseball or basketball game or the news, clean up in the kitchen, and go to bed.  It’s the same routine every day, although every day is different in its own way.

Today is Joan’s birthday.  She’s 75.  I’ll be 75 in August.  I still remember the day we met at a party and our first date.  I remember when we got married and when she gave birth to Ray.  I remember our trips to Europe.  Overall it’s been a very rewarding experience being with my wife.

I think of all the people around the world who don’t have it as good as we do in this country.  People are being killed and tortured and are having to leave their homes because of war and droughts and storms.  And now the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is trying to show his machismo by saying he has weapons now that will break through any system so it can annihilate other countries.  What insanity!  What an ass.  And we’re asses in this country, too.  People want to go to war before thinking it through.  They don’t want to talk, talk, talk.  All they want is to start a war here and there and everywhere.  It was Winston Churchill who said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.”

Thursday, June 18, 2015 – Football Injuries

My brother Bob, a great athlete, was my idol.  He played basketball for two years and one year of football at Hollywood High.  He made All-City in football and got a scholarship to Oregon State.  It was a bad back that ruined his football career at Oregon State.  Bob was a first string running back his first year there.  In his second year, Oregon State hired a new coach, Tommy Prothro.  Because he hurt his back in practice, he couldn’t do what Coach Prothro wanted him to do, and so he quit the team and dropped out of school.  Too bad about my brother—he would have been a great running back if it wasn’t for his injury.

As for me, I injured my knee badly in a football drill at the University of Oregon, when the ball carrier (me) was supposed to run into two tacklers.  Two days later I woke up late on a Saturday morning for the first scrimmage of the season.  I limped into the training room but everyone was already out on the field.  No one was there to help me tape my very weak knee.  Hence, even though I stupidly suited up, I refused to enter the scrimmage when backfield coach Max Coley called my name.  As can be expected, this angered coach Coley, and I was a zero in his eyes for the next two years.  I didn’t quit the team like my brother did at Oregon State, I sat on the bench and played sparingly for two years.

And that, my friends, is what injuries did to the Sutton brothers who attended the two big public universities in Oregon.

Thursday, June 25, 2015 – Marty Lurie, Lou Berman, and Penny Kaplan

I wrote an e-mail to Marty Lurie, who does the weekend pre- and post-game Giants radio shows.  He told me I could come anytime the Giants were having a weekend home stand and he’d talk to me about A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014.  I chose this coming Saturday.  I was also invited by Carole Berry of California Sports Card Shows to sell my book at her upcoming event this Sunday at the Serramonte Mall.

I went for a long walk with my old high school friend Lou Berman today.  We’ve been walking maybe once a month since we met at our 50th high school reunion back in 2008.  It was a warm day at Purissma Creek Redwoods Reserve, just south and a little east of Half Moon Bay.  I learn a lot from Lou, about posture, breathing, strengthening the core, and keeping in shape.  That’s Lou, a man who knows a lot about health.

Penny Kaplan comes to mind.  She, like Lou, was also at Fairfax’s 50th high school reunion, where we caught up on each other’s lives.  I went to the Senior Prom with Penny in 1958.  After the prom, we drove up to the Hollywood hills, parked in an empty lot overlooking Los Angeles, and started making out.  We got each other sizzling hot and were about to do what I had dreamed of doing, which was to have sex with a woman, when all of a sudden there was a knock on the fogged up window of my mother’s 1949 four-door Plymouth.  It was two cops warning us that we had to stop what we were doing because someone could sneak up and take advantage of us.  Caryl Chessman, around that time, was known for sneaking up on couples making out in the hills and raping the women.  Chessman went to the gas chamber for his crimes.

How can I ever forget the almost first time I had sex with a woman?  Impossible.  I’ve asked myself many times over the years, “Why didn’t I follow up with what Penny and I were doing?”  I believe the incident was so traumatic, for me at least, that I didn’t even think of calling her.

Friday, June 26, 2015 – The Warriors , the Giants, and My Weight

It’s 6:30 p.m.  The Giants will play the Colorado Rockies in 45 minutes.  Tomorrow I’ll be on the Marty Lurie radio show in the late morning to plug my book.

The Golden State Warriors won the NBA Championship against the Cleveland Cavaliers 4 games to 2.  Andre Iguodala won the MVP of the series, mainly for his defense against LeBron James.  The Warriors played a grand style of small ball that sped up the game against a tired Cleveland team that had two of its All-Stars out with injuries, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving.  But that’s the luck of the draw in sports, the team that’s healthier usually wins.  Steph Curry is now the toast of the basketball world, acting very humble for a superstar, unlike LeBron who said twice during the series that he was the “greatest basketball player in the world.”

But to get back to the Giants.  Their bats finally came alive, at home, in their last two games against the San Diego Padres.  Before those two wins, they lost nine straight at home.  They couldn’t score.  Now they’re scoring, six runs in one game and 13 in yesterday’s game.  All is now right in Giantsland.  They’ve been nipping at the Dodgers’ heels for the past few weeks and are only one game out of first place.  Matt Duffy, our new third baseman, is hitting in the 290s.  The rest of the infield—Joe Panik, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, and Buster Posey—is hitting in the 280-300 range.  Angel Pagan’s batting average is dropping fast.  He can’t hit lately, although he was batting in the 300s only a couple of weeks ago.  I believe he got his first extra base hit in three weeks last night.  Something is the matter with Angel.  He’s not the Caballo Loco that he used to be, when he played with verve and recklessness.  Nori Aoki was batting in the 300s until he broke a bone in his lower leg.  Hunter Pence has been out most of the season with a broken wrist and now has tendinitis.  He might be back in another week or two, but who knows if he’ll be the man he used to be with that bad wrist.  Gregor Blanco has taken the place of Aoki in left field and is hitting the ball better than he ever has.  Travis Ishikawa was called back to the team after an injury in spring training and playing in Triple-A most of the season.  Ishikawa was the man who hit a walk-off home run against St. Louis in the National League Championship Series last year that catapulted the Giants into the World Series.

Today I weighed 206.  I ate too much last night, too many potatoes that Joan brings in from her garden.  I’ve got to cut down on carbs:  potatoes, rice, noodles, bread.  I’ve got to eat more veggies, fruit, and nuts or else I’ll gain back all the weight I paid Kaiser to lose.  I lost 50 pounds on their weight loss program four years ago.  I’ve gained back 35 of those pounds.  I can’t let myself do that.  It’s red alert time, red flag time.  Don’t eat so many goddamn carbs, Joe.  Eat moderately, don’t eat seconds, eat slowly, drink more water, cut out alcohol.  I’ve got to do those things, or else it was a waste of time and money to go through the Kaiser-Optifast diet.  I learned a lot while doing it, but now I’ve picked up some bad habits that need to be broken if I’m to get down to my ideal weight of 190.  Fifteen pounds is all I have to lose.  Last week it was 10 pounds.  I’m reverting back to my old ways and have got to break that spell, just like Angel Pagan has to break out of his downward spiral.

Monday, June 29, 2015 – Selling My Giants Books and Religion

Yesterday, at the Serramonte Mall, I paid for a table at a sports collectibles show to display my three Giants books.  From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. I sat and watched hundreds of people pass by my table.  Business was so bad that I kept changing the price of my books to make something happen.  My latest Giants book I changed from $15 to $10 and sold only two copies.  I changed the price of my other two books from $2.50 each to $2 to $1, back to $2, back to $1 and ended up selling The Year the Giants Won the Series for $1 and The YEARS the Giants Won the Series for $2.  I sold seven copies of The Year and 10 copies of The YEARS.  I was the only guy who had one table with just books on it.  Every other vendor had tables upon tables of cards and pictures and other memorabilia of the sports teams and heroes of the Bay Area.  I spent my time looking at all the people passing by, made up mostly of Latino, Filipino, and Chinese people.

As I was lying down for a nap a couple of hours ago, I was listening to NPR radio, and it seems like there’s a backlash going on by religious groups not to follow the latest Supreme Court ruling of same-sex marriages.  Even politicians are defying it (all Republicans, by the way).  Sometimes I feel like these people and their religious ilk think they own the world because they think the Bible is the word of God.  Please, folks, the Bible is NOT the word of God, it was written by mere mortals two thousand years ago.  “How childish,” Albert Einstein said, “to believe in a personal God and to follow a religion.”  I’ve agreed with Einstein since I was maybe five or six years old.  What kind of thinking goes into people’s minds who think the Bible is the word of God?  You know what it shows me?  It shows me that we humans have a long way to go before we mature.  Why do these people want to deny same-sex couples the right to get married?  “Because God said so,” is their answer.  We live in a country of secular laws, not religious laws.  There’s supposed to be a separation of Church and State.  It’s written in the Constitution:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  Religious people think they have a right to break a law because it goes against God’s will or the Bible’s teachings.  They forbid or deny people with opposing thoughts and viewpoints the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all because they think it’s God’s word.

OK, I admit it, one of the great sayings of all time comes from the Bible—”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Now there’s something we can and should take from the Bible.  Let people be if they’re not harming anyone or breaking the law.  You, the religious, are many times the least religious of all.  To deny same-sex couples the right to marriage, this is one of those times.

I want to end today’s entry with a quote from the Greek philosopher Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing?  Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  Then whence cometh evil?  Is he neither able nor willing?  Then why call him God?”

Wednesday, July 1, 2015 – Nap Time

I’m trying something new.  Instead of falling asleep at my desk during the day, I’m taking an hour nap that Kathy Bender, my water aerobics instructor, recommended.  I told her I didn’t have the energy I had a month or two ago and I asked her if it was my getting older, my not sleeping well, or what?  All she said was “Take a nap during the day.”  Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past three days and I still have less energy than I’ve had for most of this year.  What the hell is going on?  Is it waking up twice each night to go to the bathroom and not being able to fall asleep when I get back in bed the second time?  I wish I knew the answer.  Maybe I should get to bed earlier.  Maybe I shouldn’t drink as much liquid in the evening.  All I hope for is that I get over the fatigued, tired feeling I have and gain back my usual energy.  Is that asking too much?

Sunday, July 5, 2015 – Frederick Douglass and the Revolutionary War

Yesterday was July 4th?  I read a speech by Frederick Douglass that he made on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, the 76th birthday of America declaring independence from England.  He was glad that the 13 colonies broke away from England.  But he was unbelievably sad and angry that slavery still existed in 1852, where black slaves were treated less than human in a country that had been brought up to believe “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Douglass a true orator, made his point logically and steadfastly.  At the end of his speech, he still saw hope that someday America would free the slaves and, 12 years later, during the Civil War, America did free the slaves.  But the remnant of that brutal, inhumane treatment still exists to this very day.  But Douglass’ hope gives me hope, and it should give hope to all African-Americans that things will get better…slowly and surely.  Yes, it’ll take many more years for black men and women to be recognized as just men and women.  There is still so much prejudice in this country.  That’s why I say it’ll take many years, but someday that day will come when black, white, red, yellow, and brown people will truly be equal without having the slightest prejudice in their bones.

As I sat watching TV last night, I came across the final fifteen minutes of the final episode of the HBO series about John Adams.  It showed Adams and Jefferson both on their death beds on July 4, 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Jefferson was 82 when he died, and five hours later Adams, 90, died.  Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

After I saw both presidents pass away in a great HBO series, I turned to the History Channel and came across a three-part series called The Sons of Liberty, about how Massachusetts’ colonists like Sam Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock, and John Adams wanted to break away from England’s hold over the 13 colonies.  From what the series showed, Sam Adams and Paul Revere were the major forces in starting the break from England in 1773.  I thought the 3 1/2 hour series (counting all the commercials) did a splendid job of showing what went into Massachusetts breaking away from England’s dominance.  It showed the Battle of Bunker Hill and the ingenuity of the Americans in fighting the overwhelming force of the British army and navy.

Watching the series reminded me of what went wrong with the U.S. starting a war with Iraq.  We were like England of 250 years ago, thinking we could control a country with our military might.  We’re still paying the price of one of the great foreign blunders our country has ever made.  We’re just like England, unable to understand that you can’t, as a foreign power, control a country where you don’t understand their people.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015 – The Sutton Family

My mother’s name was Jean.  I think of her often.  She is probably the greatest influence of molding me into the man I am today.  I have the deepest respect for her because she gave so much of herself.  She worked very hard most of her life.  She cooked, shopped, cleaned, washed, and raised six boys and one girl (who passed away at the age of five in 1935).  My mother was a workhorse, as the saying goes.  She was always in the kitchen in the mornings and in the late afternoons cooking, working to raise her large brood of six husky boys.  My God, six boys!

My dad worked hard at his linen stores in downtown Los Angeles to feed and clothe us.  I say stores because I remember three of them.  He moved twice over a period of 30 years.  The first store I remember was on 7th Street and Broadway when I was maybe five or six.  There was a man selling miniature turtles on the busy sidewalk just outside the store.  I have a photo of me holding a small turtle in my palm in our backyard on Homewood Avenue and Wilcox.  Then there was a store on 8th and Olive Streets.  Dad didn’t stay long there.  The last store he had was on 7th and Hill Street.  He was there a long time.  That store had a lot of glass fixtures that I had to clean whenever Dad asked me to help him out.  I also vacuumed the dark blue carpet in that store.  Upstairs was the storeroom where I sometimes sat in a wooden desk chair at a desk to eat my lunch, which consisted of a sandwich, apple, and carrot that Mom prepared.  Most of the time I ate my sandwich downstairs so as to be ready to wait on a customer.  I remember during Christmas season most of our family came downtown to help out.  The holiday season was a very busy time.  That little store fed and clothed all eight of us in the 1950s and ’60s.  Mom used to go downtown in the ’60s to help Dad and my brother Dave, who eventually became Dad’s partner.  She was a great salesperson, as were Dad and Dave.  I was only a fair salesperson.  If it wasn’t for Christmas, the Sutton family could never have lived a comfortable middle-class life.  Yes sir, that little store at 411-7th Street gave us life.  Dad gave us life.  Mom gave us life.  What a life.

And then in 1977, after living in Berkeley, Eugene, Berkeley again, and Portland, I moved to San Francisco and met Joan Bransten.  Joan lived a completely different life growing up in San Francisco than I did in L.A.  She came from a very wealthy family, the MJB Coffee family.  Her father, William Haas Bransten, was head of the sales division.  He married Sue Victorious in 1938.  Joan was born in 1940 and her brother Jim was born four years later.  Joan grew up in the best of surroundings with nurses, maids, cooks, and went to private schools and Stanford.  She taught high school English in Alameda for a year or two before moving up to Sonoma County with her husband, Ramon Sender, to live on a couple of communes.  But that’s another story for another day.  So yes, I met Joan in 1977 and we hit it off very well and a little over a year later we rented a house in the Sunset District at 21st Avenue and Lawton for $400 a month.  Another year passed and we got married.  When I met Joan she had six-year-old Sol with her.  I thought Sol would be the only child I would ever be a father-figure for.  But Joan gave me the confidence to have a child of our own, and that child turned out to be Raymond Sutton, named after my father, who is now 34 years old.

Saturday, August 1, 2015 – Family and an Acrostic Poem for Don Ellis

It was a very hot, humid day today.  But then a breeze started up around 3 p.m. and it turned out to be a beautiful day.  The whole family—Joan, Sol, Jang, Olby, Sol’s father Ramon Sender and his wife Judy Levy-Sender, and I—ate dinner at Savor Restaurant in Noe Valley.  Olby, three years old, is eating like a normal person now.  He can swallow without any trouble.  It took him three years to get to this point instead of filling his mouth whenever he was fed and spitting it out.  It showed great patience on Sol and Jang’s part.  Me, I would’ve gone out of my mind in one week.  So I give credit to Sol and Jang for a job well done.

Olby can really communicate now.  He’s a great kid, a little jokester who loves being read to by Joan (he calls her Meh-meh).  He loves to have a toy or ball in his hands at all times, he loves to turn pages in books, and he loves singing songs that he’s learned in pre-school.  The kid is going to be something special someday.

The thing is, all of us human beings are special.  From the homeless person to the policeman to the baseball player to the truck driver to the waiter.  We’re all SPECIAL if you think about it.

I wrote an acrostic poem for Don Ellis for a birthday present that’s coming up in five days on August 6, the day in 1945 that the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Don was four years old on the day the Enola Gay dropped the bomb.

Daring in his pursuit

Of shepherding writers and poets,

Nothing stops this man from

Assisting them to reach their potential.  He is a person who doesn’t

Look back but only forward, seeing brightness in the present and the

Distant future.

 

Every writer and poet he partners with should thank his

Lucky stars for the knowledge and philosophy this man possesses. “You only

Live once, so go for it” is his motto.

Ideas are his forte.

Strength of mind, integrity, and positive thinking constitute his character.

Monday, August 3, 2015 – Why Would Anyone Want to Read My Books?

I was talking with my website man Bradley Charbonneau today.  We talked about making a new Home page for my site.  Because I’m practically an unknown writer, Bradley asked me, “Why would anyone want to read your books, Joe?”  And I was frozen in my tracks for an answer.  That’s what I want to explore today—why would anyone want to read my books?

I write mainly about three different subjects:  writing, baseball, and my life.

I’ve written two books on the subject of writing:  Write Now! and My Writing Year.  I’ve written three books about the San Francisco Giants’ World Series championship seasons that I’ve incorporated into one book called San Francisco Giants:  A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014.  I’ve written three novels:  Morning Pages, A Class of Leaders, and Highway Sailor.  I’ve written two short story collections:  The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories and The Life and Death of Abraham Massry and I’m about to publish an e-book of short stories called The Bar of Soap and Other Stories.  I’ve written a memoir about my son Ray and me called Father and Son:  Thirty Years of Growing Up Together.  And lastly, I gathered a collection of 2000 quotations that cover all aspects of health, Words of Wellness:  A Treasury of Quotations for Well-Being.

Now, why would anyone want to read my books?  Three reasons:  (1) I write from the heart, (2) I’m a genuine, innovative, and meaningful storyteller, and (3) My stories are stimulating, humorous, and invigorating.

I write from the heart.  I don’t know any other way to write except to put my heart and soul into my work.

I’m a genuine, innovative, and meaningful storyteller.  I’m not a flowery writer, nor do I describe things in detail, such as clothes, furniture, nature, and a myriad of other things that a lot of writers write about.  Detail is not important to me.  The important thing for me is the story.

My stories are stimulating, humorous, and invigorating.  I do try to stimulate the reader because I myself like to be stimulated.  I try not to be too serious.  People don’t like a writer who isn’t open to humor every once in a while.  I’m an invigorating writer, breathing life and energy into a story as much as I possibly can.

I see I have to work more on why anyone would want to read my books.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  I’ve written a variety of books, all of which are based on my experience.  Some of my stories are very short, many are medium, and several very long.  My novels are made up of stories that are connected to each other.

Why would anyone want to read Jack London or William Saroyan or Ernest Hemingway?  People read different authors for their own personal reasons.  I recently read Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian writer.  Probably all of what he writes is from his experience, although he calls it fiction.  He’s a writer who gets into details.  Me, I don’t get into details like he does.  I’m more like Saroyan, who didn’t write about details.  But he wrote stories that I loved.  I pictured him in those stories.  I picture every writer in his or her stories.

Why do I like Saroyan so much?  I identify with him more than any other writer.  He writes about everyday people and about himself in this world.  He writes about his relatives, his Armenian heritage, his experiences as a kid, teen, and adult.  He gets down to the nitty-gritty like most good writers do.  Knausgaard gets down to the nitty-gritty.

Everyone has their own favorite writer or writers.  Now, how can I become a favorite writer of readers?  By writing interesting stories.  A writer is a storyteller.  Jack London was a great storyteller.  His energy was palpable.  I just read a piece by a friend of mine today, John Levy.  He wrote about the symbolism of Melville’s Moby Dick.  There was energy in his writing.  Kerouac had energy, Henry Miller had energy.  A lot of writers have energy.  I want to come across as an energetic writer.

Sunday, August 23, 2015 – My Birthday Dinner and Watching an Elite Storyteller

Joan, Ray, and Ray’s girlfriend Ashley Walton took me out to dinner to a Mediterranean restaurant, Layaly, on Clement Street on August 20, my birthday.  We shared a combination plate of Arabic appetizers:  hummus, baba ghanoush, falafels, dolmas, yogurt, and pita bread.  For my main meal, I ordered a lamb shank.  It was well cooked (just like my mom used to cook it) and it had a lot of juicy meat on it.  It came with couscous and rice.

Today Joan and I watched an elite storyteller, Cathryn Fairlee, at her and her husband Greg’s house in Cotati, about 45 miles north of San Francisco.  There was a crowd of about 25 of us who paid $15 each.  Cathryn and Greg travel around the world together, from Bali to India to China to Asia to Mexico so Cathryn can learn stories, fables, and folklore from those countries.  Cathryn is a storyteller of the first order.  Today she told 12 stories from around the world, even one from the U.S., about Brer Rabbit, written by Joel Chandler Harris.

Tomorrow I’ll be driving down to my hometown of L.A.  I hope I get to see everyone I know, from my brothers and cousins to my junior high and high school buddies at Louis Ryave’s annual baseball game that takes place on the last Sunday in August, where Pink’s hot dogs are served after the game, and where some of us actually are still nimble from the ages of 73 to 76.  I’m not one of those nimble people because of my two new hips.

I’m looking forward to seeing my good friend Charles Lewman, who I went to junior high and high school with.  He who called me several years ago from out of the blue while he was living in San Francisco.  Before Charles moved down south, we used to go for walks along Crissy Field after taking a couple of tokes of pot.  We talked mainly about philosophy, the universe, energy, God, life, and positive thinking.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015 – Visiting L.A.

I’m sitting in a chair on the porch of my cousin Vic’s house in the Hollywood hills.  It’s hot, as it usually is in August.

Yesterday I drove down here and got caught in a traffic jam in 100-degree weather on the notorious Grapevine, 89 miles north of L.A.  Frustration, heat, but everyone took it in stride and the tie-up lasted about 45 minutes and then it was clear sailing into L.A.

Hot, hot, hot.

I slept well last night, which is unusual in a different place because you don’t know how hot it’s going to be, what noises to expect, things like that, plus a different mattress and pillows and such.

I spent most of today with my brother Dave and his wife Bertha.  They’ve been in the same house for more than a half century.  It was a pleasant visit for me and I hope for them.  I wanted to see Dave, who is 83.  He has a lot of energy but due to an operation on his hip a few years ago, one of his legs doesn’t work too well.  He thought I gave him a good idea, which is to drive using his left leg for the brake and his right leg for the gas pedal only.  He said he hasn’t been able to drive because of his bad right leg, therefore my idea lit a bulb in his mind.

The whole time I was there, Dave had ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s music going on his tape recorder.  We three talked about the drop of 2000 points in the stock market, we talked about Donald Trump, the blowhard, racist, divider, sexist, we talked about Bing Crosby, Sinatra, our mom and dad, Bertha’s mom and dad and her sister Florence, we talked about the environment and solar power.  Dave said his electric bill changed from $500 every two months to $40 every two months.

Tomorrow I’m going to stay at the house of my nephew Ray Charles Sutton and his wife Stacy in Laguna Beach.  I’m going to visit my old junior high and high school friend, Charles Lewman, who lives nearby in Dana Point.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015 – We Discuss Everything

I wish I could write down all the ideas and thoughts that took place between Charles Lewman and me.  I wish.  I have to remind him that I’d like to buy a good recorder while down here because I have to record our fantastic conversations or else they’ll dwindle into nothingness when we’re not living any longer.  We cover the gamut of ideas and stories.  We discuss everything—the universe, the Giants, writing, stories from our past, we talk about life and death and rebirth.  It’s the cycle of life.  Everything in the universe lives, dies, and is somehow reborn.

Thursday, August 27, 2015 – Ordered Randomness and Trump

Charles Lewman and I sat down in his and his wife Karen’s living room, we took a couple of puffs on a joint and started talking about the universe and energy.  Charles said he doesn’t believe in luck.  He believes in the ordered randomness of the universe.  He gave me an example of ordered randomness.  It’s when I sent out an e-mail to my friends a few years ago, telling them about a book I had just self-published.  One of my e-mails went to Chris Danzo, who in turn forwarded it to an old friend I haven’t been in touch with for many years, Mike Simon, who then told his friend Charles about my book.  Charles, who said he had thought of me while in Brazil with his wife, had recently moved to San Francisco.  He decided to call me, and that’s how we got together.  We started walking, talking, toking, and now we’re the best of friends.

Charles and I talked about Donald Trump and his run for the presidency.  Trump’s major issue, other than calling everyone in our government stupid, has made Americans wary of Latinos, saying that they’re pouring over the border from Mexico killing, raping, stealing, and then to top it off, Trump says the Latinos are living on welfare, compliments of the U.S.  He’s making us Americans hate Latinos, just like Hitler made the Germans hate the Jews.  That’s enough for me to knock that blowhard and clown off my list of potential presidential candidates.

Saturday, September 12, 2015 – Walt Whitman

I’m reading a biography of Walt Whitman, my favorite poet.  I’m learning things about him that I never knew—that he wrote a novel that sold well; that he was into certain fads, such as phrenology and mesmerizing; that he wrote short stories, mainly about overindulging with alcohol, which he was against.  He was a very religious man, a pantheist, one who sees God in everything.  He never followed any organized religion.

Sunday, September 13, 2015 – What Is Life Worth?

Yesterday, Joan and I drove up to Occidental to see an art show of Bill Wheeler’s paintings.  Bill looked crooked and very bad.  He had a car accident recently and can barely walk.  The walls in our house are filled with Bill Wheeler paintings.  Two dining room walls, a bathroom wall, our bedroom, my office, the hallway, and one painting downstairs in the guest bedroom.  Bill looks like a shell of the man he used to be.  But he keeps painting, even though he looks so fragile—his body bent, his complexion almost pure white, and now I hear he’s on the verge of Alzheimer’s.  It seems like he’s in his last days.

Man, many people my age are falling apart.  It’s going to happen to me someday, for sure, but I keep trying to hold it off by working out as much as my body can go, by working at my writing, by getting up after a poor night’s sleep and trudge along, as I did yesterday.  I feel much better today, but that tired feeling still lingers.

I’ve got to snap out of it.  I’ve got to get outside after writing this entry for at least a half-hour walk in our neighborhood.  I’ve got to wake up and go, man, go, for what the hell is life worth if you sit on your ass all day?  I’ll tell you what it’s worth.  It’s worth gornisht, zilch, nothing.

I e-mailed The Bar of Soap and Other Stories to Don Ellis.  I need his feedback.  A writer needs feedback from either a group of peers or an editor, he just can’t do it alone, he needs someone to look at his writing and tell him what he doesn’t notice or what he should notice.

Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Scott Walker, and Ben Carson are nothing but simpletons, plus Trump is a pompous blowhard.  The only person speaking the truth is Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.  Bernie is for equality and fairness.  He is not out to make the wealthy wealthier like the Republican candidates want, he’s out to make the wealthy pay their goddamn fair share of taxes.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015 – The Giants and 49ers

The 49ers, in the season opener last night, beat the Minnesota Vikings 20-3.  The Giants also won last night, beating the Cincinnati Reds 5-3.  The Giants have won four straight and are still 7 1/2 games behind the first place Dodgers.  The Dodgers are just as hot as the Giants.  It doesn’t seem like the Giants can catch up to them, and so the baseball season, with about 17 games remaining, is practically over.  But you never know, for as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

I watched both the Giants and 49ers last night, switching back and forth.  It was a sloppy football game, but it was obvious that the 49ers were better than Minnesota.  The 49ers running back, Carlos Hyde, gained something like 165 yards.  He looked spectacular, scoring two touchdowns.  He’s fast, powerful, and I hope he can stand up to the rigors of an NFL running back.  He carried the ball 26 times last night.  The coach should have taken him out when they were leading 20-3 with five or six minutes left to play.  Mr. Hyde could have gotten injured on one of those runs in the waning minutes of the game.  Here’s what I have to say to the 49ers coach:  “Coach Tomsula, take Hyde out when you have a big lead.  You don’t want to risk him getting injured, do you?”

Saturday, October 3, 2015 – Go, Cubs, Go

The Giants didn’t make it into the playoffs.  They finished second to the L.A. Dodgers in the West Division of the National League.  The teams in the National League playoffs are all set:  St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, L.A. Dodgers, New York Mets.  The Dodgers will meet the Mets next week and the Cardinals will play the winner of a one-game do-or-die between the Pirates and the Cubs.  Here’s hoping the Cubs give their fans a season to remember.  You see, the Cubbies haven’t won a World Series since 1908.  Go, Cubs, go.  [Note:  The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Mets 4 games to 1 to win the 2015 World Series.]

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 – Citizen Tom Paine

I’ve been reading about Thomas Paine.  Paine, early in life, worked for his father as a corset maker and also for the British government as an excise man.  He met Benjamin Franklin in London.  It was Franklin who saw Paine’s potential as a thinker and writer, and so he wrote a letter of introduction to his son-in-law in Philadelphia, Richard Bache, to help Paine get situated.  This was in 1774 when Paine was 37.  Soon after his arrival in America, Paine was employed as editor of a journal called Pennsylvania Magazine.

During the French Revolution, Thomas Paine was in Paris, in prison, sent there by Robespierre.  And there he was, very sick, about to be guillotined for arguing against killing Louis XVI, and guess what?  He was saved by James Monroe, the future president of the United States, who nursed him back to health.  Monroe, stationed in Paris, was the Secretary of State for the U.S. at the time.  Monroe, an aristocrat, a slave owner, was either told by President James Madison to free that rapscallion Paine, that man who was always getting into trouble, or maybe Monroe did it out of compassion for the man who helped spur the colonies to stand up to Britain by writing Common Sense.  During the Revolutionary War, Paine wrote a series of pamphlets (16 in all) called The Crisis.  In the first Crisis, he wrote those famous words:  “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”  Paine also wrote The Age of Reason, a book that attacked organized religion.  In it he describes himself as a deist, as were Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin.  A deist is one who believes in an impersonal God who created the universe but does not act in it.  Paine did not trust the Bible or established churches, but believed in an afterlife.  Maybe he believed, like Socrates, that you are either in a deep sleep after death or you will go to a place where all the dead are ruled over by just judges.

Thomas Paine, one of the most forward-thinking men of his time, told the aristocracy of America—Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe—that slavery was inhumane.  He believed in equal rights for women.  He believed in “Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  He lived his entire life that way.

Paine, who never gave up fighting for human rights, died in poverty, disdained by Americans for his religious views.  Another famous quote by the man says it all:  “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, to do good my religion.”

Thomas Paine never gave up fighting for the progress of the human race.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 – Oh, Mercy, Mercy Me

I went downtown today to join a rally outside of PG&E, our power company in San Francisco, to get behind solar power and wind power.

I’d say there were about 300 people who stood outside PG&E’s headquarters and heard a few speeches and a couple of songs, one song being the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” and the other, a Marvin Gaye song, “Mercy, Mercy Me.”

“Oh, mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be, where did all the blue skies go, poison in the wind that blows…Oh, mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be, oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury.  Oh, mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be, radiation underground and in the sky, animals and birds who live nearby.  Oh, mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be, what about our overcrowded land, how much more abuse from man can she stand?”

I thought I’d put my body where my spirit is by joining the rally at PG&E.  The speakers were black, the singer, with a beautiful voice, was black.  It was good to see black people take a leadership role to help save the planet.

I’ve written many times about climate change, how the glaciers are melting, the seas rising and warming, where many people are going to suffer before the nations of the world start doing something about it.  Oil and coal are not the answer, sun and wind are the answer.  The four major polluting countries—U.S., China, India, Russia—have got to get together and agree to really and truly work on this problem that is threatening all life on Earth.

Oh, Mercy, mercy me, we humans need to join hands on this beautiful planet.  We need to get down on our knees and kiss the earth for giving us life and sustenance.

Friday, October 23, 2015 – Larry David

I’m thinking of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm show on HBO.  I’ve been watching a lot of reruns that go back to 2002.  Larry David wrote a yearly arc for the show, plus arcs for about 10-12 episodes in the yearly arc.  Pure genius.  In other words, it’s like I was writing a book that had 10-12 short stories that somehow all connected to make a novel.  The book would have a full arc from the first short story to the last, and each story would have an arc of itself.  How does Larry David do it?  It’s pure genius on his part.  I can see a hell of a lot of thinking and planning on his part—extremely heavy thinking and planning.  It boggles my mind how he accomplishes it.

I can’t do what Larry David does; I can only commend him for what he does.  The thing is, I’m Joe Sutton, I don’t work or write like Larry David.  I’d like to commend myself for what I’ve accomplished, which is that I’ve produced 13 books since I began my writing career in 1969.

Saturday, October 31, 2015 – God Only Knows

If I multiply 12 months in a year for 15 years, I come up with 180 months.  In 180 months I will be 90 years old.  I wonder if I’ll live that long.  It reminds me of what Neal deGrasse Tyson, the American astrophysicist, who, while a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, said, and I paraphrase, “It’s good that we die.  There would be nothing to strive for if we lived an eternal life.”

Joan and I have signed up and have prepaid to be cremated.  Joan’s brother Jim was cremated.  His ashes are buried in our backyard.

Death.  What happens after death?  I believe when we die, we die, the end.

Is there a God?  I don’t believe in a personal God you can pray to and who listens to our prayers.  God is another name for what started this unbelievable universe that we’re a tiny, minuscule part of.  Could another name for God be Energy?  God only knows.

My goodness, think of the universe, how vast and unending it is.  It’s mind-boggling to think where all that energy comes from.  Absolutely mind-boggling.  We live on this little planet we call Earth.  We revolve around the sun, just like the seven or eight other planets in our solar system.  It’s been said that there are almost four thousand solar systems in our Milky Way galaxy.  And then there are billions of galaxies.  So figure it out, there must be life on other planets in the universe.

I’m alive right now at 2:25 p.m., October 31, 2015, in a city called San Francisco, in a state called California, in a country called the United States.  The U.S. is one country out of almost 200 on this planet that we all live on.  Life.  Actually there’s too many of us human beings on Earth—7 1/2 billion presently.  We’re a very wasteful and greedy species.  We’re poisoning our oceans, rivers, land, and atmosphere.  There’s so much work to do to put a stop to this madness.  It’s sad that many animal and plant species are actually going extinct every day because of how we humans treat our planet.

What is it to be alive?  Being alive is to have energy and awareness.  As I look out the windows of my office, I see fog rolling in from the Pacific, which is only 2 1/2 miles from where I live.  The temperature is perfect 70 degrees.  I’m alive.

We humans are thinking beings, but a hell of a lot of time we’re not using our brains correctly, what with war and pollution still going on.  It seems we have a long way to go before we are thinking, learning, and creating in the correct manner.

Sunday, November 1, 2015 – NFL Football

The National Football League is becoming extremely boring to me.  Too many penalties, too many reviews of disputed plays, too many injuries, too many commercials.  I’m totally losing interest in professional football, especially when the 49ers are playing.  Oh, I listen on radio to the games, because I’d really be wasting my time if I watched their games on television.  Why?  The 49ers are inept—in every phase of the game:  coaching, quarterbacking, defense, offense.  They stick to the same dull, non-working things that have made them lose six out of eight games so far.  “Coach Tomsula, replace Colin Kaepernick at quarterback already!”  Tomsula is like a dinosaur, he won’t change his tactics.  “Change something, Coach, or else you ain’t gonna be a coaching for long.”  The 49ers haven’t scored a touchdown in God knows how many quarters.  Today their scoring came from two field goals.  When they lose, they really lose.  They need to do something different.  Throw screen passes.  Block better for pass protection and the run.  Pass accurately.  But it’s the same old, same old week after week.  They’re the laughing stock of the NFL.  I blame it on the coach and the quarterback.  They just aren’t getting the job done, and if someone isn’t doing his job, then change is needed.

Sunday, November 8, 2015 – Nate Wirt and the 49ers

For the past four days my friend Nate Wirt from Houston has been visiting.  What are my impressions of a friend I’ve known since we were 12-years-old?

Nate is very extreme in his views.  He’s a right-wing Republican, a born-again Christian, a man who was once addicted to drugs and sex and got out of it by going to Lord Jesus.  The Lord saved Nate from self-destruction.  For instance, until he found the Lord, he was married four times.

Nate and I became friends in the seventh grade in 1952.  At the time he was bigger than me.  Today I’m an inch taller and we weigh about the same.  We used to compete against each other on the blacktop of Bancroft Junior High.  Then, a couple of nights a week in the YMCA league, as members of the sports club the Eagles, we were teammates.  In our ninth grade year, I threw 17 touchdown passes to him.

Nate and I played on winning football, basketball, and baseball teams for the Eagles.  But it was during the day, after school, that our teams faced each other in all three sports.  Nate, who was very competitive, helped me hone my athletic skills.

The 49ers won today.  Unbelievable.  It’s their third win in nine games.  Blaine Gabbert was the quarterback, not Colin Kaepernick, who had digressed so badly that the whole town wanted him benched.  The 49ers can now see hope.  Gabbert, not only inspired the offense, but the defense picked up on it, too.  It took Coach Jim Tomsula a long time to replace Kaepernick, but at least he did it.  I’m willing to give him a little credit for that.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 – Nate Wirt

I’m finished with my friend Nate Wirt.  He sent me an e-mail that I didn’t read until he was off to Houston on American Airlines early in the morning yesterday.

Nate and I had a heated argument Sunday while walking in Golden Gate Park.  It had to do with politics and religion, two subjects he and I are truly poles apart on.  But it was what he wrote to me in an e-mail that I just couldn’t take any longer.  He brought up my brother Charles being in hell and that Charles relayed a message to him:

Hi Joe,

I will be on the plane when you read this.  After that horrible exchange we had Saturday in Golden Gate Park, I thought we might have been finished as friends.  I was really disgusted with you.  But God was not about to let that happen.

Now here is a very weird thing I am going to say to you:  There is a story in the Bible about six brothers who did not believe in the true God.  One day the older brother died and went to hell.  While in hell he contacted someone on Earth and asked him to warn his living brothers about following him to hell.  The story relates to you and me—and your oldest brother Charles.  God has allowed me to hear a voice from Charles.  Charles says, “Don’t let Joe come to hell.  Warn him, Nate.”  Joe, I’ve tried to warn you often; I am still trying to warn you and protect you.

We may never see each other again.  We are both getting old.  Remember what happened this weekend.  We even had a chance to watch a football game together!  How wonderful was that?  Joe, pray and ask God for answers.

Nate

Here’s my e-mail reply:

Nate,

You still haven’t learned that I refuse to believe what you believe.  You’ve kept at it and kept at it over the years.  I can’t take it any longer, Nate.  I have many memories of you, of me hanging out at your house when we were teenagers, of you turning me on to pot, of you catching my passes and blocking for me in the YMCA League.  You majored in biology at UCLA and earned a doctoral degree.  Now you’re a born-again Christian who believes the world is only 6300 years old.  You’re still trying to change me and I wholeheartedly resent that.  Our friendship is over, it’s finished.

Nate, I loved you and hated you, especially when you became one with your Lord.  You were given orders to change me and I wouldn’t go for it.  Never, ever would I go for something that is against what I believe.  You’re a zealot.  Zealots create friction and it surely happened with us this time.  Oh, there have been bouts of friction in the past, but to now include my brother Charles, of him telling you to keep me out of hell, you’ve gone too far this time.  No more, Nate, that’s it with you and me.

I never tried to change you, but you, you tried to change my thinking over the past 30 years.  I tolerated it all those years.  You never learned to respect my beliefs, and for that I can’t ever be with you or talk to you again.

Joe

Saturday, November 21, 2015 – Patience and Hope

What does catching a cold teach me?  It teaches me patience, that I will eventually get better and gain back my strength.  My body was telling me this week that it needed rest.  “Take it easy,” it said.  “Take care of yourself.  Be patient, you’ll eventually get better.  You’re 75 years old, it takes a little longer than it did when you were younger.”

I got a cold that didn’t lay me up in bed this week, but it prevented me from going to my water aerobics class or for a walk.  My strength was sapped.  And strength is needed to keep going in this world.  How do I gain back my strength?  By taking my foot off the pedal, by resting.  I woke up late a few days in a row.  I gargled with salt water to ease a sore throat.  I took my vitamins.  I ate mostly fruit and vegetables.  And I waited and waited until today, when I learned something.  I learned that patience and hope go together.  You gotta have hope, miles and miles of hope…and you gotta have patience that you will eventually gain back your strength.

Sunday, November 22, 2015 – The 49ers, Paris Terrorists, Republican Presidential Candidates, and Bernie Sanders

I just got back from a half-hour walk.  I tested my strength today and it came through for me.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to my water aerobics class.

My son Ray came over to watch the 49ers play the Seattle Seahawks.  Seattle ran roughshod over the 49ers.  The offense played a mediocre game, but the defense didn’t do well, missing tackles right and left.  The final score was 29-13.  The big news for the 49ers is that Colin Kaepernick will miss the rest of the season due to a shoulder injury.  He is due to have surgery this week.  That’s the end of season for Kaepernick.  No wonder he did poorly this year; he hurt himself seven weeks ago against Green Bay.  It’s beyond me why Coach Tomsula kept playing him until he decided to play Blaine Gabbert at quarterback.  So whose fault is it that Kaepernick kept playing?  Tomsula?  Kaepernick?  The general manager?  The owner?  I say it’s the coach’s fault.  [Note:  The San Francisco 49ers finished the season with a record of 5 wins and 11 losses.  Coach Jim Tomsula was fired.]

One hundred and thirty people died in Paris last Friday.  Three places were attacked by Islamic terrorists:  a restaurant, nightclub, and I forget the other place.  Terrorists even tried to get into a soccer match between Germany and France but were thwarted.  They had body bombs on them and killed themselves when they were turned away.  Such a sad state of affairs with people who are willing to end their lives because of religious fanaticism.  “Allah Akbar, God is great.”  Bullshit.  Now the majority of Americans are unwilling to take in Syrian refugees, people who have lost everything due to the ISIS terrorists and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Prejudice has taken hold of America, what with Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio saying we can’t let refugees into this country because all it takes is one of them to cause a terrorist attack, blah, blah, blah.  Hatred is being preached by every one of those Republicans running for president.  The Republicans are a sorry group indeed, the head honcho being Donald Trump of these non-thinkers who are preaching to a constituency of racists and right-wing nuts.

The Democrats have Bernie Sanders, who will probably lose the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton.  But Bernie is not afraid to speak his mind about the wealthiest 1% running our country.  Bernie is the only one who is willing to stand up to the money interests because he won’t accept their money.  That’s why he’s not beholden to oil, coal, the banks, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry.  Bernie says the most important thing is to stop Climate Change from wreaking havoc, whereas not one person running on the Republican ticket won’t come anywhere near to broaching the subject.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015 – Writing Advice

I’m stuck in my writing, not necessarily writing, but in what I should do to get started on a new writing project.  I’ve sought the answer to my problem by reading J. Krishnamurti, by talking to Garett Griffin at the Y, by talking to my friend Charles Lewman, and by talking to my editor Don Ellis.

Krishnamurti says to not have conflicting ideas. Garrett says to write in my journal like I’m doing now. Charles says to “Row, row, row my boat gently down the stream,” meaning I shouldn’t force something but to go with the flow.  Don says to read in my journal and whatever strikes my fancy, take note of it and ask myself if I can make something out of it.

Friday, December 18, 2015 – Neal Shapiro

Last night on a TV commercial, I noticed the name of Camarillo, a small city between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara on Highway 101.  Earlier today I came across the name of Camarillo on the Internet.  Being that I was in a writing funk, I considered it a signal from the Writing Gods to see the name of Camarillo twice in less than 24 hours.  The Writing Gods were telling me that I should write about my trip to Camarillo.

You see, I was invited to speak to a large group of writers in Camarillo on February 12, 2013, about my book that had come out in 2012 called My Writing Year:  Making Sense of Being a Writer.  I was told to speak about my book and about the writing process.

Neal Shapiro, a former classmate and football teammate of mine at Fairfax High in Los Angeles, had somehow come across My Writing Year on the Internet.  He e-mailed me and said it was the perfect book to talk about to the large group of writers he belonged to:  the Ventura County Writers Club.

But the story I’m thinking of is not about my book or my presentation, it has to do with Neal Shapiro, the vice-president of the Ventura County Writers Club that was made up of 175 members.

Neal, as I already said, was a football teammate of mine at Fairfax High.  In our senior year, all we had to do was win the last game of the regular season to get into the city playoffs.  Neal was a lineman, I was the quarterback.

In our second to last game of the regular season, we were playing Hollywood High, our crosstown rival.  It was a tie game with less than two minutes to play.  Both teams were out of timeouts.  We had the ball on our 45-yard line.  I called a pass play in the huddle.  I took the snap from center and faded back.  I didn’t see anyone open and so I scrambled to my right and saw Eddie Lingo way downfield.  While on the run, I threw a perfect spiral to Eddie on Hollywood’s five-yard-line, where he was immediately tackled.  It was the greatest and most important pass I ever threw in my life.

It’s necessary that I write what happened when we huddled-up for the next play.  This is what I said to my teammates as the clock was running down:  “I brought us down here; I’m taking it in.”  That is probably the worst choice of words a quarterback can say to his team in a huddle.

After I called my play, I faked a handoff to our halfback diving into the line and kept the ball so I would be the hero.  I didn’t gain a yard.  What happened was that I ran into a Hollywood High lineman who hit me square in my right thigh.  I barely made it back to the huddle.  I called the next two plays for our halfback, Bill Peters, and he scored on the last play of the game.  It was a great victory for us, except my thigh was so sore that it kept me from practicing with the team the following week.  I went to our team doctor on the day of the game and he refused to give me a shot to numb the pain.  I didn’t even suit up.  We lost.

Neal Shapiro, before my presentation to the Ventura County Writers Club, took me out to an expensive restaurant for dinner.  He told me it was his fault that I couldn’t play.  He said, “I remember tackling you in practice and breaking your ankle.  It was because of me that you couldn’t play in our last game.  It was my fault we didn’t go to the city playoffs.”

“Neal,” I said, “it wasn’t your fault, it was my fault.  I called my own play in the huddle that ended my high school career with a thigh contusion.  Believe me, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Are you sure, Joe?”

“I’m absolutely sure.”

As for my presentation to the Writers Club, it went extremely well.  There were about 125 members present that night.  I sold maybe 40 copies of my book.  But what was most important, I liberated Neal of his guilt, a guilt he kept since 1957.

Monday, December 21, 2015 – Heaven and Hell

My journal entries are written off the top of my head.  I can’t make stories out of them.  What I can do, though, is extract story ideas from them.  That’s what Don Ellis told me last week.  He said, “Read your journal entries and make notes if you come across a good idea.”

I know I can write about Nate’s and my relationship that just came to an end after 63 years.  Why the end?  Because of Jesus and hell and my brother Charles and Nate trying to keep me from going to hell.  Well, I’ve had enough of Nate’s proselytizing and him telling me that he prays for me to believe in his God and if I don’t, I’ll go to hell when I die.  Nate thinks that’s the honest to God TRUTH.  For a friend of mine to think that way, he’s not really a friend.  He has to be ignored by me because he’s been at it for the past 30 years.  When Nate brought my brother into the picture, that was the last straw.  My body trembled when he said my brother Charles was in hell and that Nate heard him say, “Keep Joe out of this hell I’m in.”  That was hitting way below the belt.  It showed me I wasn’t getting any respect from my so-called friend of 63 years.  That concluded our friendship.  I don’t have to hear about Nate’s religion anymore.  I don’t have to hear his extreme right-wing views anymore.  I’m a free man.

But then I ask myself, “We’ve been friends all these years.  I shouldn’t take his belief that seriously, that my brother is in hell and that I’ll join him if I don’t believe Jesus is my savior.  I’ve taken Nate’s religious crap all these years, why am I closing my mind to end our friendship now?”  Well, my answer is that my brother was brought into the picture and that Nate just won’t give up trying to convert me.  I’ve had enough of this malarkey.  I don’t want to associate with a true believer anymore.  I don’t need the aggravation.  I surely don’t know the TRUTH, like Nate thinks he knows it, but I surely don’t believe that we humans, after death, will go to a heaven or hell.  Who the hell thought of a heaven or hell in the first place?  Who brought that thought to more than half the people living on Earth.  [Note:  As of 2023, Nate Wirt and I are still friends.  We just don’t talk religion or politics anymore.]

Wednesday, December 23, 2015 – The Warriors

I’m watching the Golden State Warriors, one of the great teams in all of professional basketball history.  They’re such an exciting team.  No matter how far behind they are, they, through a force of will, always come back and win.  Their record is 27 wins and 1 loss, which is the greatest start of an NBA season ever.  They won the NBA Championship in June, now they’re the best team playing today.

What’s their secret?  Teamwork.  No one plays for themselves, they play for the TEAM.  Steph Curry, the leading scorer in the league, the MVP of the league, is their leader.  The thing is, this team has improved and is better than the team that won the NBA championship in June.  Steph, Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, Klay Thompson, Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala, Festus Ezeli, all have improved.  Their record of 27-1 speaks for itself.  [Note:  The Warriors had the best regular season record of all time, 73 wins-9 losses.  They went on to play the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.  Cleveland won the series 4 games to 3.]

Thursday, December 24, 2015 – Deep Water Aerobics

I’ve been doing deep water aerobics since 1999.  It’s the only exercise that doesn’t bore me.  There are a number of moves in the water to help strengthen almost every muscle in the body.  We do a lot of running without touching the bottom of the pool to get the heart beating and the blood in our bodies moving.

Kathy Bender is our instructor.  She’s been at it for maybe 7 years now.  Before Kathy, our instructor was Nancy van Gelder.  I’ve told both of them that they’ve added 5-10 good years to my life.  There are usually 20-25 people in the deep end of the pool.  We wear a flotation device/belt around our waist, so as not to touch the bottom of the pool.  We go forward, backward, sideways.  I’d say there are about 15-20 different moves we make.  Deep water aerobics is a great exercise for getting every muscle in our bodies stronger.  We go at it hard for 50 minutes and at the end we stretch for 10 minutes.

The exercise is so good that Joan joined the class.  She comes maybe once or twice a week; I attend three or four days a week.

I believe that deep water aerobics will be a very popular exercise someday.  There is no jarring of the knees, hips, or back.  A lot of people taking the class have had hip, knee, and back  surgery, or will have surgery on those parts of the body.  I took the class not to aggravate a bad hip, which I eventually had surgery on a year after I started.  Three years later I had surgery on my other hip.

Sunday, December 27, 2015 – Ray Gatchalian

I’m thinking of a man I met only once, sometime in the 1990s.  I’ve never forgotten him or his name.  This man, who I only spoke a few sentences to, showed me something no other man on Earth has ever shown me.  Why does he stand out in my mind?  It’s not what he said to me or to my friend Alan Blum who introduced us, it’s what he did which spoke volumes.

Ray Gatchalian was his name.  He, his wife, and 10-year-old daughter were standing near their car on busy Fillmore Street when Alan and I came upon them.  We all talked a short while, and then the Gatchalians were ready to go.  Ray’s wife got into the driver’s seat, his daughter got into the front passenger seat, and Ray got into the backseat.  That’s what he did that spoke volumes to me.  It showed Ray’s humility, humbleness, and his thoughts on equality when he let his daughter sit in the front seat.  [Note:  Ray Gatchalian was a paramedic in Vietnam, an Oakland firefighter, a musician, poet, documentary filmmaker, family man, and peace activist.  He died in a truck accident in the mountains of Chile in 2003 at the age of 57.]

*****