January 2010
Of Doppelgangers, Italy, Streak Running, and Kaddish: Notes From Around the Globe
Posted 1/22/10. Last week’s blog on my adventures at a naked beach drove Annette Kaiser of San Jose, California, to her dictionary to find out the actual meaning of the word “doppelganger.” I confess I did not know what a doppelganger was when I used it to describe a certain portion of the anatomy of the fellows running around unclothed at Baker Beach in San Francisco; it just sounded funny to me. A doppelganger, says Annette, a dedicated crossword puzzler who knows her way around dictionaries, refers to a person’s “evil twin,” which makes the reference even funnier, I think.
Looking to go to Italy? And learn some Italian while you’re there? Do you have long-lost family relatives in Italy and need help in finding or contacting them? Beyond the Sights can do all these things for you—and more. It is a new travel business just begun by my very own bro, Dave Nelson. And when you get to Italy on a Beyond the Sights tour, these are the five Italian instructors who will be teaching you the language. Ciao, baby!
Steve Conlin, aka Steve the Bartender, dropped me a line the other day, saying that he has moved from the Los Angeles area—formerly he was a bartender for the stars, at the old Bel Air Hotel in Beverly Hills—to Las Vegas. You may recall Steve’s contribution to this column not long ago, his sharp recitation of the events surrounding actor James Dean’s death. Steve is “now appearing,” as he says, at Wynn Las Vegas. Next time you’re there, look him up and ask how a novel he is thinking about writing—“a Southwest desert noir novel concept featuring a bartender/detective character in the tradition of Philip Marlowe”—is faring.
Ever hear of streak running? Neither had I until I got a note from Nancy Shohet West, who is a writer and streak runner who has enjoyed my Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration. Streak running is not running around with your clothes off, like those fellows at Baker Beach. It is, says Nancy, “ a term to describe people who run a mile or more every day without ever taking a day off.” Nancy does indeed run a mile or more every day, and she blogs and tweets about it with the same energy and enthusiasm she gives to her streaking. Last I checked, Nancy was up to Day #895 in her running streak, and that is in the Massachusetts snow.
By the way, let's hear it for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! Way to go, brothers and sisters.
Last year Pearl Felson died at the age of 87, and her son Leonard decided to
honor her life and memory by writing a blog. It’s called A Year of Kaddish,
What a Year of Daily Praying Triggers Within and Without. 
Leonard is an old
Hayward friend of mine who is now an esteemed journalist living in Hartford,
Connecticut. He is Jewish, and he says that according to Jewish custom, “a spouse
is obligated to say Kaddish [prayers] daily for one month; when a parent dies,
the children say it for eleven months.” So his blog is a sort of year-long
prayer for Pearl. But, he adds, it isn’t about his mother directly; it is also
about his spiritual quest and life appraisal following her loss.
Here in supposedly sunny California, we are experiencing big rains and wild storms, including tornados. But I know this is paltry indeed compared to a typical winter up in the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota where Travis Roste lives. Travis, a frequent contributor to this space, tells me that it has been “cold as a well digger's bum here lately. Until just this week when it warmed up, the last couple weeks were 10 to 20 below at night. Brrrrrrrrr.” That’s enough to freeze your doppelganger, all right.
The Wheels of Change Road trip chugs on: This Wednesday, I speak to the always friendly folks at the Kiwanis club in Benicia and on Saturday, Jan. 30, I hit the road again for a signing at Autobooks-Aerobooks bookstore in Burbank.
Book Tour Takes Scandalous Turn: Author Visits Naked Beach!
Posted
1/15/10. Monday, January 4 was Take Your Sons to a Radio Station Day, a
fictitious national holiday I made up to justify bringing Hank and Gabe with me
to a radio interview at KPFA in Berkeley. Denny Smithson, the host, was as gracious to me on the air as he
was to my sons off the air, letting them sit next to me in the studio during
the interview. (Pictured is a KPFA producer in the control room.)
This
was actually the second radio interview on the Wheels of Change Tour in which
I’ve brought my sons, the first being an NPR “California Report” gig I did in
San Francisco in November. After that interview I treated the boys to lunch at Mel’s Diner on
Van Ness and took them to see Baker Beach in the city. Baker Beach
is just west of the Golden Gate Bridge with swell views
of the bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the mighty Pacific. I had not been
there in a long time and so, while the boys were chasing waves, flopping around
in the sand and getting completely wet and filthy, I decided to take a quick
walk to stretch my legs.
I started walking toward the bridge past other children, families, and couples when I noticed something rather, well, unusual. Suddenly the only people on the beach were men. All without swimsuits, and all with their doppelgangers hanging free. Now, in my younger years, I did occasionally go to a naked beach, but the naked beaches I frequented all had women bathers on them as well as men. This was a strict requirement of mine. I immediately hit the brakes, and turned around.
As I did two women, both fully clothed like myself, were coming down the beach behind me. “There seem to be a lot of guys in that direction,” I said. They said, “Yes, we know,” and made an abrupt right turn away from the water toward the parking lot. By the time I returned back down the beach to where the boys were, they were fighting and throwing sand at each other, and it was time to go home.
Note to families and others: Baker Beach in San Francisco is a terrific spot, well worth a visit. But if you take a walk on the beach, you might want to head west, away from the bridge, rather than east. Fewer doppelgangers in that direction.
On another note, Mel Atwell of Walnut, California recently dropped me a line, mentioning as an aside that his wife Millie had turned 83 and he was 87. Mel is a retired Pasadena fire fighter whose brother Dick played for the House of David barnstorming baseball team. During the Depression (and even later) the Israelite House of David in Michigan sponsored several barnstorming teams, and Dick (standing, far left) was one of their top performers.
The bearded Davids (though there were no religious requirements to play on the team, you did have to have a beard) traveled across America in the 1930s astounding fans with their trick-catching and throwing routines, sort of a white baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I wrote about Dick and Mel, who also played a little ball in his younger days, in The Golden Game, and am now lucky enough to count Mel and Millie among my friends. (Dick has passed on.)
Mel and Millie report they have five children, 18 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. Now that is truly an astounding trick.
Speaking of people I’ve written about who are friends, Washington D.C. FBI Agent Adam Lee sent along pictures of the car he is working on with his son that he wrote about in my last blog. You may look at these pictures and merely see the front and rear end of a rebuilt Dodge Charger, but they're more than that; they're lifelong memories, being created by a father and his son. And when they're finished, those memories will be able to go pretty fast too.
Finally, on Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 6 p.m., I will be speaking about Wheels of Change and showing slides at the Mechanics Institute on 57 Post Street (between Market and Kearny) in San Francisco. Stop by and say hello; friends and family are free. I promise: Everyone will be wearing clothes.