This came up over coffee at Zeli:  A friend of mine was at a formal event recently. He was sitting with a prominent, accomplished family–dad, mom, and grown daughter. The daughter had gone to exclusive private schools, then on to college and graduate school. She was beautiful too. This friend of mine wondered what his life would be like if he had grown up in this family instead of his own—how much farther would he have gotten in life? Would he have been able to accomplish more had he not been born into his own highly dysfunctional family (so dysfunctional that he spent time in a children’s home when his parents were unable to care for him).

I had a very strong reaction to this line of thinking. “Sounds like a case of shoulda, woulda, coulda,” I said. “We don’t have any control over the family we’re born into.  It’s much more important to me to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”  I illustrated this by marching my forefinger and middle finger in a line across the table.

My friend persisted.  “Every year on my birthday, it all comes back to me.  The hurt, the loss.”

We agreed on the idea that with some things in life, there is a permanent sense of loss.  There are losses that are deep and irrevocable.  These losses produce scars that may fade but never really go away.  Sometimes these scars get re-aggravated.  We may even have a propensity to get ourselves into situations that lead to the re-aggravation of these scars.  Or we may be aware of our scars and learn how to take care of them and protect them.  But they remain.

Still, I think it is fruitless, pointless, and a waste of energy to think about what might have been.  Besides, that prominent family may look perfect on the outside, but I’m sure they’ve got their own peccadillos, losses, dramas and tragedies just like everyone else.

Do you think back on what might have been?  Ponder how things could have been different (better) for you had you had a different (better) childhood?  Or (like me) are you just trying to make do with what you’ve got and maintain some forward momentum, no matter how small the steps might be?

PS The Nutty Jazz show was outstanding.  I’ve seen them several times now and they are consistently great.  Here’s what my friend Kevin Carr said about them:

This just in – Nutty ROCKED The Sandbox for their final show there Wednesday night 10/21!  Play was delayed at first on account of game (final Dodgers/Phils face-off), so the jazz started late, and it being a sports bar, everybody was bummed about LA’s loss.  A real tribute to just how great this band is: eight out of eight tables plus the patrons at the bar all stayed for Nutty’s first set…and loved it!  These cool cats made everyone forget their sorrows and just enjoy great classic rock meeting great classic jazz in a most NUTTY way!

Nutty will be at the Hip Kitty in Claremont on Saturday, November 21 at 8:00 pm.  If you want to carpool from Pasadena, let me know.

The Sandbox is discontinuing their Wednesday night jazz series.  Major bummer!

That means tonight is your last chance to experience Nutty in the OC…at least for the forseeable future.  Let me know if you want to carpool.

For those not keeping score at home, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the National League West champions. There are multiple reasons for this, and I’ll leave it to my betters to do the heavy-lifting on the analysis. For my part, I’ll offer up just three things: 1) The Dodgers bullpen showed up; 2) There was lots of nice hitting by lots of players; 3) Joe Torre’s continued used of Bigelow Green Tea. I think we’re all clear on the healing, restorative power of tea.

I’ve let this sleeping blog lie recently as I’m spending gobs of time organizing my high school reunion. It has taken a lot more time than I thought, due in large part to how Facebook works/doesn’t work. (One example, FB doesn’t allow you to attach a file to an e-mail sent through their system. So I couldn’t send the registration form through FB…had to do it through regular e-mail. Extra step x 50 people x other stuff = A Lot of Time.)

Back to baseball. I was at Dodger Stadium a couple of weeks ago and snapped these photos with my trusty cell phone cam. I was sitting behind home plate in the section with all the scouts from other teams. The Cardinals guy was sitting next to me, and in the row behind there was a guy with a MASSIVE, diamond-encrusted, NY Yankees ring. I *had* to take a picture.

I love it that men celebrate their victories with huge diamond rings. This one was obtained in 1999, when Joe Torre’s Yankees won the World’s Series.

Two kids (brothers) were sitting next to me. They said they’d sneaked down from the Top Deck, no mean feat at Dodger Stadium. The wearer of the ring offered them a chance to try it on.

Brothers with ring

That’s the owner of the ring in the pale peach on the right hand side of the frame. Nice guy. Very comfortable with complete strangers/Dodger fans oogling his bling. He’s now with the Giants.

I love it that these brothers made it down to field level and got to see this ring up close and personal. I love it that the owner of the ring was so simpatico. I love baseball.

It’s not uncommon, but it is tragic.  A person is wrongfully convicted of a crime and sent to prison for decades.  It happened to Bill Dillon, a guy who went to my high school.

I wasn’t friends with Bill but I remember him very well (and his older sister, Debbie).  He was a gangly kid with a really great smile and a friendly demeanor.  If you needed 35 cents to buy french fries in the school cafeteria. Bill seemed like the kind of guy that would lend it to you and not bug you about paying it back.

In 1981, Bill was wrongfully convicted of first degree murder and sent to prison for life.

The good news is that Bill was released from prison late last year thanks to DNA evidence and the good work of the folks at the Innocence Project of Florida (details of the case here).

The bad news is that he spent almost 28 years in prison and the State of Florida is holding up his compensation because according to state law, the exonerated are eligible for compensation only if they have no prior record.  Here’s an op-ed piece by Marshall Frank suggesting that ‘prior record’ should be restricted to acts of violence.

There must be some politician in Florida (or higher up) who would like to mount the white horse and make things right in this case.  Unmerited suffering for decades due to wrongful conviction is a tragic miscarriage of justice, and the least Florida can do is follow the example of Texas (words I thought would never come out of my mouth—but Texas has comprehensive compensation plan) and pay Bill for robbing him of the life he deserved to live as a free man.  Money doesn’t restore the years lost.  At the same time, financial security provides a necessary foundation for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Bill’s release day, with his sister Debbie.  November 2008.

Bill Dillon and his sister Debbie.

Thanks to the Militant Angeleno for the heads up via Facebook. Here are a couple photos of the Station Fire from 7 September 2009 snatched from the Mount Wilson cam.

2:51 am

3:13 am

Did you notice that little flare up in the lower right? I hope it’s minding its own business.

I got out of the car and could see ashes floating in the air. I went into Trader Joe’s and there they were, five firefighters hovering around the prepared salads section. One of them was reading the list of ingredients on the back of the package. “Are they going to kill me with the sodium?” he wondered aloud.

They were all over 6 feet tall, handsome, trim and fit. I stared and couldn’t figure out how to say thank you. I wanted to slip them each a $20.  (So tacky…I know.  But wouldn’t you like a tip like that?)

I didn’t say anything.  Until now.  Thank you, Fremont Fire Department.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Re: The Station Fire.  Fire update 6:05 am, 2 Sept. 2009: Chief Mike Bryant from the fire department says:  If the fire has a personality, the descriptor for today is (once again) “cranky.”  The west end of the fire is above Little Tujunga.  The east end of the fire is west of Chilao.  $21 million has been spent fighting the fire, which has now covered 150,000 acres.

Mt. Wilson update: It’s in good shape.  Firefighters were able to stay there overnight.  Class A foam and retardant has been deposited in the area, along with the 7,500 gallons of gel that was dropped yesterday.

Evacuation update: That information comes from the LA Sheriff.  Bryant didn’t have the latest.

Getting accurate information out to people about the fires hasn’t been the smoothest, or so I hear from Altadenablog (who has done a wonderful job).   The LA Times has been doing a great job, but Sparks and Butterflies bemoans local television coverage and says she’s gotten the best and most accurate information via Facebook.

On the local blogging front: Frazgo did a round up of locals over at Los Angeles Metblogs (which has some good coverage overall).  Deb over at Altadena Above It All has several info posts and some great photos.  Karin has been blogging photos and running descriptions of what she’s seeing from her vantage point in Altadena—here’s a sample.  Petrea at Pasadena Daily Photo posted a fire photo round-up (but didn’t mention my post—no hard feelings, I promise!).

Except for Frazgo, the bloggers mentioned above aren’t particularly active on Facebook, so those of you watching the fire via Facebook may have missed them.  And you non-FB folks may have missed some good stuff too.

Straddling the Facebook vs Rest of Interwebs is the Pasadena PIO, who is keeping the City of Pasadena’s web site updated (along with her blog).  She has also been using Facebook to get info out to local residents.

So in the Venn diagram of life, I offer my Facebook fire coverage round up, with thanks to all who have posted information there:

KChristieH has done several fire-related post with great photos and info.  She points us to the LA Times’ updated interactive map of the fires.  She also pointed us to InciWeb and to this site with many LA County area emergency scanners.

From Susan:  She has a thing for time lapse movies of the fire.  A link to the Mount Wilson Tower Cam (come back soon!).  The Firefigher Blog.  A list of fire stations accepting food and water donations.  Gargantuan image of the fire area from space courtesy of NASA.

From Monica Hubbard: A link to Mount Wilson Observatory.

From Eye Level Pasadena: A link to CBS News on Ustream (As I watch this live feed, I have the window open.  It’s like smell-o-vision!)  Jill also links to Kolby Kirk’s map of the fires.

So thanks to people posting info on Facebook, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the primary sources of information in a disaster like this.  Perhaps the Pasadena PIO will hire me…

Photo from Saturday, 29 August 2009, 11:00 pm.  Taken from just south of Woodbury between Lincoln and Fair Oaks.  I know, I know—I need a tripod.

Station Fire, La Canada Flintridge, CA.  3:00 pm, 28 August 2009.

Fire over Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

At the entrance to La Vina, Altadena.

Watching the action at the intersection of Windsor and Ventura, Altadena, CA.

NBC sets up.

Northbound on Lincoln Avenue, Pasadena.

All photos © Tim Down

Here’s an article from the New York Times entitled “Is it OK to Blog About This Woman Anonymously?”

Very interesting indeed.

“As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance.”

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Cocksure: Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence.” The New Yorker 27 July 2009: 26.

Gladwell comes to this conclusion based (among other things) on the research of Ellen Langer, a psychologist who says, regarding competition, “…because ability makes a difference in competitions of skill, we make the mistake of thinking that it must also make a difference in competitions of pure chance.”  This results in overconfidence.

“In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropolgist at Harvard, writes.  “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.”  Winners know how to bluff.  And who bluffs the best?  The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is.”

We’re good so far, right?  Here’s where the analogy to the Pasadena blogosphere breaks down.

“According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.”

* * * * *

It seems like overconfidence is helpful…up to a point.  One needs overconfidence tempered with knowing what one’s limits are.  My dad has been a master of overconfidence his whole life.  In first grade he didn’t want to go back into the classroom after recess, so while marching in the line of children heading back inside, he didn’t make the left turn with the rest of the class but kept marching straight on in the direction of home.  As a 20-something, he convinced the Library of Congress that he had a reasonable knowledge of modern foreign languages and got a job filing foreign-language periodicals.  In truth, even though he had no mastery of any foreign language, it was easy enough to tell the French from the Dutch from the Swedish, etc., so he had no problem doing the job.  It was filing, for gawshsakes.  At least the task of deciphering one language from another added a bit of interest to the job.

Flush with confidence from a string of jobs (journalist-photographer in the Air Force, Evelyn Woods speed reading instructor, teacher at Massanutten Military Academy), he got a naval commission and was sent to Viet-Nam.  He went on to a civil service career in public relations, high school counseling, army recruiting — endeavours that require one to exude confidence.

My dad and me at Dodger Stadium, 2008.

As a kid in western Pennsylvania, my dad moved a lot (Franklin, Guys Mills, Meadville, Zelienople…Okay, I’m not sure about Zelienople, but I threw it in because it’s such a great place name).  As an adult, my dad has moved a lot.  My dad has lived in Hollywood since 2002, which means he has not lately been moving a lot, and he is ready to move.  He has been applying for civil service jobs overseas, but with his hearing in bad shape and his memory getting worse, it is unlikely he could either be hired or handle a full-time job.

I recently had to talk him out of moving to Las Vegas, an idea prompted by tax problems with the State of California.  (He doesn’t understand, as a government retiree, why the government should take money out of his retirement.)  Able to minimize the wretched Vegas heat from the comfort of his top-floor Hollywood apartment, he was attracted by the lower cost of living.  He probably also wanted to continue his streak: “I’ve never lost in Vegas,” he avers.

Plans for Vegas have now been shelved, but my dad continues to exhibit, between episodes of JAG and Perry Mason, a desire to move.  At the same time, he does tell me about his failing memory.  “I have no secrets,” he’s always said.  He gets mad at me when I don’t respond to his e-mails, he’s crotchety when I call in lieu of e-mailing, and the other day he got mad at me for using the word “palindrome.”  Despite all this, my fingers are crossed that he will continue to have lucid moments of honesty when he tells me about his failing mental state.

Confident in Covent Garden, London, 2008.

I’d love to hear about how it’s going with you and your aging parents.  Feel free to comment, or leave links in the comments.