Bottle of pop, please

In a story I read a few days ago, a guy from Los Angeles, visiting relatives in Minnesota, was asked if he wanted a bottle of pop.  He thought to  himself, "Pop.  I'd forgotten I was in the Midwest."

And yet, I grew up in Southwest Washington -- also on the West Coast -- and I always called a soft drink "pop."  So did everyone I knew.  It wasn't until I attended college in California that I heard those around me calling pop "soda."  It was one of those multi-cultural learning experiences, like learning not to pronounce "creek" as "crick."

What do I call it now?  I haven't called a soft drink "pop" for years.  But I don't call it soda, either, at least without feeling somewhat self-conscious that I'm speaking a foreign language.  I guess that what we called "pop" in my neck of the woods as a kid, I now call "a soft drink"

But the meaning really isn't the same.  When I think of "soft drink," I think of one of the several brands of cola.  And maybe root beer, or, for some folks, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew.  It's easier to just say "Coke" or "Diet Coke" or "Pepsi."  "Pop," on the other hand, encompassed a vast spectrum of colors and flavors.  

It's like saying that the French expression "une tasse de café" means a cup of coffee.  Literally it does, but -- at least before globalization and Starbucks appeared on the scene -- what a Parisian visualized as une tasse de café was something very different from what an American visualized as a cup of coffee -- which was usually, a large mug of black liquid poured out of a percolator. 

So, if "pop" didn't mean quite the same to me when I was a kid, how was it different from today's "soft drink," or "soda"?  Coke and Pepsi, were pop, of course, but pop wasn't reducible to cola drinks or root beer -- it came in many flavors.  Beyond that, a bottle of pop differed visually and tactilely from the usual can of soda one gets today in a store or out of a machine.

Pop came in bottles, unless it was served in a glass in a restaurant.  (Or "soda fountain," a term we used routinely, but mentally identifying "soda" with "ice cream soda," not with pop.)  They came in bright colors -- orange, lemon-lime, grape, cream (a light coffee color), raspberry, cherry, etc.  Moreover, the bottles usually were found resting in a bath of cold water -- either to be removed and paid for at the counter, or to be worked out of the water through a coin operated mechanism.  When you were thirsty, which as kids we usually were, nothing could beat that moment of anticipation as you held a bottle of brightly colored liquid in your hands, feeling the ice-cold water dripping off the bottle -- that moment just before you popped off the cap.

Before you got to the store, you would debate in your mind which flavor of pop you were going to buy, but it wasn't until you actually saw the bottles lined up in their cold water bath that you made your final decision.

So far as I know, pop doesn't come today in the full rainbow of flavors that it did when I was a boy -- although I like to think that in some dusty, small town store, a full array might still be found in an ancient pop dispenser.  Like much in our culture, the voice of advertising has smoothed out the voices of those multitudes of kids with disparate tastes.  "Soda" is California-speak, and that term may have the same connotations for Californians and their ilk as pop does for me; "soft drink," on the other hand, sounds like sales talk, an attempt by advertising folks to iron out the cultural differences among different parts of the country. 

To "blandify" us.  No kid ever begged for "a soft drink."  Many kids begged for "a bottle of pop."

But, as I say, I've abandoned "pop" from my vocabulary.  If I decline a beer today (rarely!), I'll say, "No thanks, but could I have a soft drink?"  I can't say, with a straight face, "How about a bottle of pop?"

Besides, true "pop" no longer really exists.

Hooray! Covid is Dead!

Strange, isn't it?

Within a few hours of each other, most of America's airlines on Monday abandoned all requirements that passengers be masked.  At the same time, the shopping mall near my house became full of unmasked customers, whereas a few days earlier most customers had been masked.  Same with Safeway this morning, where I buy my groceries.

All because a federal judge in Florida -- a judge appointed by Trump, who ignored a rating of "not qualified" by the American Bar Association in making his appointment -- ruled that the C.D.C. had overstepped its legal authority and had not followed proper rule-making procedures, and that therefor the federal rule was invalid.

No one waited to see if the ruling was to be appealed, or if the judge would be asked to stay her ruling pending appeal.   Within hours, not only all major airlines, but also Amtrak and transportation authorities in a number of cities across the nation stopped enforcing the masking requirement, and, in most cases, dropped their own requirements.

It's as though this one Florida judge had declared the pandemic over -- even as Covid incidence has been rising in most states, in response to the BA-2 subvariant -- and that we have returned to the pre-pandemic days of 2019.  "Let the good times roll!" the populace exults.  Let's dance through the tulips, with happy Disney birds flying and singing joyfully about our heads and squirrels exchanging kisses in the background.

No thanks.  Not for me.  My mask stays on whenever I'm indoors in a public setting, except while eating.  It stays on especially in crowded airplanes, trains, buses, subways, and light rail.  It stays on and I'll glower at those of my un-masked neighbors who blow their possibly virus-laden breaths in my direction.

My fellow Americans often strike me as a class of mindless kindergarten children, totally lacking in self-discipline.  I probably strike them as a cruel, forbidding, kill-joy headmaster in a nineteenth century British school.

We'll see who laughs last.

Here we go again!

Will it be a new ritual, two or three times a year?  I mean the Covid booster, of course.

I finished my two-shot Pfizer series back in February 2021.  Seven months later, I was boosted (or "boostered," as I like to say).  And now, yesterday, I received my second booster.

The U.S. government seems rather ambivalent as to whether the average American needs a second booster, at least this soon after the first booster was given, presumably sometime last fall.  But the government experts seem more enthusiastic when it comes to the "elderly," which now apparently includes everyone over the age of 60 or 65.  

The CDC itself recommends first (Pfizer) boosters for everyone aged 12 or older, and leaves it up to individuals aged 50 and over whether to seek out a second booster.  The CDC does require that a second booster come no earlier than four months after the first.  I hardly know anyone under 50, so it feels like the entire universe is eligible for that second booster.

I have no question at all as to the safety of the booster, and I conclude that it's at least more probable than not that the second booster will provide me with an increase in immunity.  The medical profession is devoted to the distinction between increased immunity from severe illness or death on the one hand, for which the first booster supposedly still provides protection, and increased immunity from even "mild" contagion on the other.  It's those words "mild" and "severe" that disturb me.  I have no interest in testing their boundaries with my own health.  I was happy to err on the side of caution by getting that jab in the arm on Thursday.

My only concern is that in another four months I'll be headed for Scotland and Italy. Both of those countries are now experiencing an incidence of Covid much higher than that in the United States (but far below some of the levels we've seen over the past two years).  Their numbers do seem to be moving in the right direction at present, although we now have the new BA-2 subvariant to haunt our minds.  

Will I need a third booster before setting off for Europe in August?  I'm sure the experts will still be arguing, and I'm also sure that -- unless Covid has become a trivial concern by that time -- I'll be wanting that additional protection.  If the same standards exist for a third booster as for the second, I won't be eligible for a third booster until August 13 -- just two weeks before I fly to Glasgow.  That timing will work out ok for me, assuming I can get the shot as soon as I qualify.

Side effects?  As I've mentioned before, I've had no side effects from my first three Covid shots -- or, for that matter from my last two flu shots.  Twenty-four hours after my second booster, I still have no symptoms.  Either I no longer have any effective immune system at all to be disturbed by these shots, or I have an extremely competent immune system that gives each shot its  immediate attention without getting all riled up and giving me irritating symptoms.  Symptoms that might -- to a frustrated and undiscerning mind -- seem almost as bad as Covid itself.

Anyway, I'm pleased with having received my second booster, and after a week or so -- when enhanced protection kicks in -- will feel quite brave as I rub shoulders with my fellow man.

But I'll still wear a mask in enclosed public places.

The Man in the Attic

My bathroom has a combination bath/shower.  With the usual selector knob -- you turn it one way, and you get water through the spout into the tub; you turn it the other way, and you get a shower.  On mine, if you turn it half way, water comes out in equal proportions from the spout and from the shower.

At the end of my shower, after turning off the water, I routinely turn the knob half way, to totally drain the pipes.  But sometimes I get distracted and forget.  My last shower was such an occasion, apparently, because when I tried to turn the selector knob to tub to obtain the right temperature before turning it to shower, I found it already on the tub option.

The normal response, of course, is -- as I said -- I forgot to drain the pipes last time I showered.  And this was my rational response today.  But deep inside, I felt alarm.  My instincts told me, "The Man in the Attic has taken a shower while I was out of the house."

Who is this mythical attic dweller?  And whence cometh he?  

Back when I was a kid, I was much smaller and the photo supplements in the Sunday newspaper -- notably Parade Magazine -- were much heftier.  One Sunday, I read about a couple who had discovered that some guy, without their knowledge, had been living for a long time in their attic.  He would come out for food and water, and possibly exercise, only when the owners were safely gone.  You might say he was an early example of homelessness, except he wasn't -- he had found a home.

The hair on my young neck stood up when I read this.  Our house didn't have an attic, as such, but it had a lot of dark crawl spaces emptying through cupboard doors into the upstairs bedroom that I shared with my brother.  My reaction was similar to my terrified reaction when I read a "comic" book about a mirror through which our hero's evil double came out at night and created havoc.  For years, I made sure my desktop mirror was covered, or at least turned to the wall, before going to sleep.  But that's another (embarrassing) story.

My brother and I reinforced each other's courage, and we would occasionally examine the crawl spaces by flashlight.  I'm happy to report that no outsider was ever discovered.  But they might have been.  It could happen.  It happened to those folks in Parade Magazine.

I grew up, of course, and put aside childish things.  Or did I?  I now live in a two story house, with an attic of sorts.  Not an easily accessible attic.  While I was in college, my family lived in a  house with a serious attic, where one opened a trapdoor and a nice set of stairs slid down.  The attic interior was more or less finished, according to photos I've seen of it, but I don't remember ever investigating it.  Or being concerned about it.

No, my present attic is accessible only through a small covered opening in the ceiling of the hall adjoining my bedroom.   If you were fat, as many Americans are, you might get stuck trying to enter it.  And you would have to stand on a chair, push the cover aside, and lift yourself by your arms into the attic.  A fairly athletic endeavor.  And not one I've ever attempted.

Not because I'm too weak or too lazy.  Mainly out of an absurd sense of fear, fear of what I might find up there.  Maybe not a person currently living there.  Maybe just an old sleeping bag, a lot of empty food cans, various drug paraphernalia?  I've lived in this house for 35 years -- what are the odds that no one has ever lived in my attic in all that time?  Did I tell you what I read in Parade Magazine ....!?

Several years ago, my brother was helping me with various issues of home maintenance.  I mentioned that I'd heard rats scurrying about at times in the past, and that a neighbor had claimed to have seen an opossum slipping his way into the attic through a presumed opening to the exterior.  My brother had no qualms about slipping through the narrow entrance and checking it out.  No rat droppings.  No openings to the outside.  And most surprising of all, no signs of human habitation.

I'm sure he gave me his honest opinion as to what he'd seen.  Or thought he saw.  But he isn't a trained inspector of attics, is he?  Seeking out evidence of human habitation isn't one of his many abilities.  Maybe the Man in the Attic isn't really the cause of the knob's position in my shower -- I'm a rational fellow, and I realize I may be absent-minded at times.  (Although I checked my towel and washcloth before taking my shower today -- just a precaution, to see if they were suspiciously damp.)

But there's been someone up there at some point.  (And I'm just as sure of that as Trump is sure of election fraud.)  There may be someone up there right now.  In fact, didn't I just heard a creaking up in the attic........????

Ritorno al Lago di Como

If you recall, I returned from Lake Como last September, ecstatic about the experience.  My sister, our cousin, and I had rented a house for a week on the western shore of the lake, about three miles north of Menaggio.  I so enjoyed the house, the lake, the entire experience that I was determined to repeat it -- to repeat it, I said at first, "soon, but "soon" soon became, in my mind, this year, 2022.

Unfortunately, the agent who had rented us the house told us that the house was not available for rental in 2022, advice that was confirmed by another agent.  We tried finding another suitable rental, until I suddenly discovered an agent who did represent the house's owners -- and yes! the house was available.

Deposits were quickly paid, agreements were signed and voilá!  I found myself renting the house for not one, but two weeks in 2022.  In September, at exactly the same time as I had enjoyed it last year.  

I do try not to be too exuberant in my hopes, recalling Heraclitus's warning about stepping in the same river twice.

Renting was easy; finding the right occupants -- besides myself -- was more difficult.  I've finally assembled two groups, one for each week.  The first week will consist of a close friend from graduate school days, and his extended family.  Six persons, besides myself.  Possibly seven, if my friend's son is able to get away from work.

The second week will consist of myself, my sister, and various family members and friends from Sonoma.   Seven persons besides myself (with one of those persons still uncertain).

Both weeks will be quite a change, as far as occupancy goes, from our group of three in 2021.  But the house is reasonably spacious, and I think it will work out fine.

Our return to Lake Como is still five months away, of course, but it comes to mind now because I've just spent quite a bit of time lining up a hotel room in Milan for all of us First Week-ers, for the night before we jump on the train to Como city, and then transfer to the ferry from Como to Menaggio.  This exercise has not been as easy as anticipated.

Not only is our rental house in far greater demand this summer than last, but so are accommodations in Milan.  My sister reports that hotels she and our cousin rented in Milan last year are now going for three times the rental this year.  If any of my readers are thinking of European travel this season, they should be forewarned!

Not only are the rentals more expensive, but the rooms available are increasingly scarce.  I located a moderately priced hotel close to Milan's central railway station yesterday, and snapped  up the last three standard double rooms available.  We needed one more single room, and were forced to rent a double "deluxe" room for about $50 more than the others.  Lining up rooms acceptable to everyone has been a bit trying, but actually I've always enjoyed being a "travel agent."  

I also secured a single room for two nights, just for myself, after my two weeks at Lake Como were over, at a different but similar hotel; that passing of two weeks, taking us into the last week of September, made a big difference.  Rooms were cheaper and much more available, at least at that one hotel.

I'll just note, and probably will describe in more detail later, that getting to Milan at the appropriate time before we go to Como will be complicated for my friend and me, both of whom will be hiking for ten days in Scotland, a hike that will not be completed until very close to the day we have to be in Milan.  We are still trying to find an appropriate flight from Glasgow to Milan.

All a bit complicated, all wonderful, all keeping me excited in the months to come.  My readers will be subjected to additional details in the near future.                           

Sonoma ghosts

Home towns are where our ghosts live.  Ghosts of relatives, now dead, and of friends, now lost.  But especially ghosts of ourselves and our siblings -- ghosts of ourselves at every age.  For me, perhaps, the ghosts I see most clearly -- my ur-ghosts -- are of myself at 13, my brother at 10, and my sister at 5.  

My home town was a medium-sized city on the Columbia River in Southwest Washington.  That's where we three kids grew up, from birth through high school.  Even after I had left town for college and graduate school, I considered that home town my "home."  Not until I started law school, at age 31, did I begin looking elsewhere -- ultimately, not so far away, in Seattle.

But sometimes, we also acquire home towns of adoption, towns that come along later in our lives, towns in which our lives become so ingrained that they also are haunted by our ghosts.  For me, such a town is Sonoma, California.  

I've never lived in Sonoma, which makes calling it my adopted "home town" a bit awkward, but such is the reality.  When I visit Sonoma, I do see ghosts.

My sister, her husband, and her oldest son moved to Sonoma in the mid-70s.  Sonoma now, of course, is nationally known as a center of wine-tourism, its central Plaza surrounded by hotels, fairly expensive bars and restaurants, and purveyors of luxury goods.  And a much-utilized ice cream shop.   Our oldest ghosts, however, arose out of an era when the town, although already a tourist attraction with many reminders of Californian pre-Gold Rush days, was also still a town with a more decidedly agricultural flavor than it possesses now -- a town where you could find a feed and seed store on the Plaza.     

My sister's two younger sons were born in Sonoma.  She, her husband (a physician), and her three sons lived -- and held court -- in a pleasant, but not extravagant, house on a hill above Sonoma Valley.  I visited them probably twice annually.  Over the years, I became acquainted with their friends, scattered around the valley.  I played uncle to her kids, taking them with me on hiking trips, once they reached their teens.  Today, I know my way around Sonoma better than I know large parts of my own home town in Washington.

These paragraphs are all introduction to the fact that I spent the past week attending a de facto family reunion in Sonoma.  The occasion was the return to America, for the first time since before the pandemic, of my sister's middle son Denny, an adventuresome sort who has spent several years teaching middle school in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  He arrived with his wife Jessie, who is also a Sonoma native.

Greeting Denny was the occasion for our gathering, but -- like a wedding or a funeral -- the gathering also served as an excuse to meet up and socialize with folks we see all too seldom.  Couples and individuals were coming and going during the six days I was in Sonoma.  Besides all the relatives, an old friend, Chris, who Denny and I met during a trek in Peru 25 years ago, came up from San Francisco, and we visited one of my sister's oldest friends, Francine, who we found confined to quarters by a poorly-timed broken ankle.  We also had a chance to visit with Pascal -- whose name appears in numerous reports on this blog of our foreign treks together -- and his wife.  They moved back to Sonoma from San Francisco several years ago.

The six days passed all too quickly.  We all love to eat, and we were in the right town for that activity.  Several of us love to hike, and we did a couple of hikes in the hills -- hills beautifully garbed in the temporary green of Spring -- surrounding Sonoma.  Many of us, in addition, enjoyed a short walk through hills to the remains of Jack London's "Wolf House," in near-by Glen Ellen.  I tried to tell myself that these hikes were working off the calories consumed during our many meals, but my bathroom scale, once I was back in Seattle, just laughed at my presumption.  

Both meals and hikes were opportunities to do the one thing most of us enjoy more than eating and hiking -- which is, of course, talking.  Subjects ranged from the early days (early, for us, that is) of Sonoma, through our more recent adventures, and forward into our plans for the future.  All served up, spiced and well seasoned by our family's famously bizarre sense of humor.

I find many ghosts in Sonoma.  Ghosts of loved ones with whom we once shared meals but who are no longer with us; ghosts of ourselves as children, and as young people; ghosts even, perhaps, of friends who have drifted away to other parts of the country.  As with all families, some of those ghosts represent unhappy times.  But most of my own family's ghosts move happily about the city.  This week, we found ourselves surrounded solely by ghosts who were not only happy, but ghosts who gladly joined in our general hilarity.

We need to do stuff like this more often.  As do all families.