It’s a strange feeling when both your parents have passed, a kind of changing of the guard between generations. And yet, immersed in memories at the moment, in many ways I still feel like a child.

I think my parents were two very lucky people to get to be together so long, and they gave lots of love to others, especially their children, their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as well as foster children they cared for before their own came along. They lived most of their married life in California, except for several years in Oregon, where my three older siblings were born, and a few weeks that I barely remember in Arizona. Our vacations when I was young were road trips, with my dad at the wheel.

For most of his working life, in fact, my dad was a truck driver, mostly driving cement mixers. Concrete lasts quite some time, so it’s possible there are remnants of his work remaining all over parts of Oregon and Southern California. But the most important legacies he leaves behind are the memories that we, his offspring, family, and friends, hold dear.

In 2006 I wrote my dad a Father’s Day letter that touched him so much he read it to numerous people, including his and my sister’s dentist. That’s the kind of guy he was. He had friends everywhere.

I’m sharing that letter below, along with a photo I took of my dad at a family reunion in 2007. (As usual, click on the thumbnail image for a larger view.)

In remembrance:

Dear Dad,

Some of my earliest memories are of waking up on cold mornings in Oregon in the secure knowledge that you already had a fire going, that you’d ventured into the cold morning before anyone else to warm up the house. Then there were those fish ponds that froze over one winter, and the big aquarium in the living room.

Fish. Fish dinners. Fishing. Pictures of family members and friends with fish they’d caught all lined up on the front lawn. Wading in a river to fish. Standing on a pier to fish. Waiting under a full moon for the grunion to run.

I remember drives, too. Lots of long drives to places I never would’ve seen any other way. Stopping by the side of the road sometimes to sleep with eighteen-wheelers whining past in the dark. Mattresses on the floors of motel rooms, long freight trains keeping us awake. Watching the road out the window in the upper bunk of the camper. The other day I saw a DVD player for kids to use in a car, and I felt sorry for any kids who don’t just look out the window and actually see where they’re going. Watch a movie while Dad drives? But there’s so much of the world to see out a car or camper window.

Fishing. The fire fall at Yosemite. Weekends in the desert at Red Hill or Salton Sea. Camping in the redwoods and listening for bears at night. Almost getting struck by lightning in Cuyamaca, but not, because somehow Dad knew. Finding wild roses growing along a creek. Attempting to camp with a cat. The night at Virginia Creek, after a day spent fishing, when we heard the rumble of a big herd of dusty sheep that came down to drink, then rumbled away leaving another cloud of dust and muddy water. Succulent fresh trout for dinner outdoors. Fishing.

I wrote a book in which a man whose son had died regretted that he hadn’t fished more with his son. That’s certainly not a worry in our family. We did lots of fishing. Funny thing is, in all those years I don’t think I caught a single fish—but I sure had a good time.

Thank you for giving me so many pleasant childhood memories.

Today I knew I needed to crawl out of this hole I found myself in. I’ve been avoiding the news, because that usually just makes me feel worse, and worse was definitely not what I needed. I know some people think that’s an unrealistic attitude, but I find the news unrealistic, in its focus on everything bad and very little good except nonsensical news about the personal lives of celebrities — people who would likely just as soon be left alone when it comes to personal matters.

I decided to search for some positive news on the Internet, and I found this story on a blog called Great Pet Net that I thought I should share in case anyone else could use a lift: Jasmine the Mother Theresa Greyhound. Dogs tend to have a healing way about them, all around, in my opinion. But this one is exceptional. She certainly had a distant healing effect on me.

It’s a beautiful spring day here. Flowers are blooming, in spite of the gopher that keeps eating them. (Our gopher loves California poppies and nasturtiums. What does yours like?) The The Hooded Orioles arrived early from Mexico, and one almost flew right into me yesterday, maybe because I was wearing green and blended with the plants. Later I watched three Red-tailed Hawks circle the sky above our house. Clouds sail across the sky today in a stiff, delicious ocean breeze. My cat Tara is always up for a game of chase or a tumble with toys. Someone I care about is playing Bach on the piano in the next room.

Yesterday I spotted a long, sinuous cloud in the western sky that looked like a Japanese dragon. I didn’t get a picture, but if you’re familiar with the animated film, Spirited Away, it looked a lot like Haku in his natural form as a river spirit.

Now that I’ve set my mind back in its more customary direction, at least for the moment, good things are beginning to happen inside me again, too.

Every now and then I find it necessary to keep a gratitude journal, to find at least three things each day that I’m grateful for to write about. I think I’ll take up that practice again for a while.

We never called him Independence, and come to think of it he wasn’t independent. He made friends everywhere he went, and in his first obedience class he was voted No. 1 Puppy. He never chewed up anything he wasn’t supposed to, but he knew what to do with a rawhide bone, and in his prime he could demolish a large one in short order. As a puppy he surgically removed squeakers from toys, and wore out several plastic balls until they no longer squeaked.

Green was his favorite color. I know dogs are supposed to be color blind, but Indi always preferred the green balls to the blue ones or red ones. We tested this, several times.

He liked to be wherever we were, and most recently he was my gardening buddy. He wanted to follow me outside whenever I worked in the back yard, even when he was too old and sick for it to be much fun for him.

Indi died last night, after 10 years of faithful, loving companionship. He was the best dog we’ve ever known, and we feel honored to have had the chance to live with him.

We miss you, dear friend, and we won’t be at all surprised if you’re voted Number 1 Puppy in Heaven.

We enjoy bird friends at greater distance these days. When I came across the linked story today, I decided I had to share. It’s a love story, just in time for that love-related holiday around the corner—if you’re reading this post while it’s fresh. But why wait until a particular time of year to celebrate love?

Here for your enjoyment, straight from Australia, is a tale of love among cockatoos. Note the first time I read it I assumed the first page was all there was to it, and only saw the “next page” link on my second time through, so be aware, there’s more.

Yesterday we had ants, the tiny black ones, in the kitchen. Not scary, just a nuisance that happens every summer. Usually they go for the honey jar on the counter, but not this time. I think they were looking for water, or they knew this heat wave was coming and were seeking a cooler place. We don’t like to use poisons, but when bugs start to take over the house, we’re forced to take action, to draw the line somewhere.

We do try to coexist. We find moths of all descriptions on the outside wall near our porch light. Some are quite beautiful. We leave the hordes of fuzzy caterpillars alone, picturing them as future butterflies, and gently scoop them up if they venture too near the front door. Daddy-long-legs don’t cause us much concern. We get lots of spiders here, outside and sometimes inside where we don’t want them, and now and then an exotic not-so-creepy-crawly wanders through, like the walking stick we found on the screen door—twice. That was kind of cool. Bats eat insects, and sometimes if we sit on the porch at night we’ll glimpse them, fast and silent, swooping in for small flying bugs attracted by the porch light.

Night before last, after a hot day, we waited until after dark to put the trashes out and retrieve the mail. When I shone the flashlight on the mailbox I found a big garden spider building a nice web right on the door. Uncertain what to do, I thought of leaving the mail until the next day, because opening the box would require reaching within a quarter inch or so of that spider, right through its web. Ken rescued the spider and me, using a stick to transfer it to a nearby shrub. It crawled away, beautiful in the moonlight with its lacy color patterns.

We have lots of black widow spiders around here, some years more than others, at times disturbingly near the house. Just last week one built its crazy, disorganized web on the handle of an outdoor trash container. Because of them I never work in the yard without gloves, and we encourage alligator lizards in our yard. We’ve read that they eat black widows, so we now have lots of our lizard friends living in peaceful proximity. I used to think these lizards were creepy, but now I sometimes talk to them. Once when Ken and I stood together in the driveway we had an odd feeling of being watched, and we glanced around. On a concrete wall nearby a pair of alligator lizards sat side by side, watching us as if to say, “Howdy, neighbors.”

When we realized the spider cozying up in front of the wall heater was a black widow—alive, in the house—we took no prisoners.

One time, a few years ago, I was barefoot in the bathroom without my eyeglasses, and saw what looked like a scrap of yarn on the floor. I almost picked it up, but had second thoughts, since I don’t knit in the bathroom, it looked too thick to be any yarn I’d used, and was an odd teal color that I didn’t recognize. I found my glasses and took a closer look. It turned out to be a dark teal blue centipede about three inches long, sort of sickly but still alive and took a few good stomps of Ken’s work boot to kill (after I screamed for help). Later he wished he’d scooped it into a jar instead and taken it outside. It was not a house centipede, it looked more like those I’ve seen in the desert. I still don’t know what kind it was. I think it tracked in on someone’s shoe, maybe the same boot that later killed it. I’m just glad I didn’t touch it. I’ve been stung by a yellow jacket and a honey bee, and I have no desire to experience any more varieties of venom than that.

The only scorpion we ever found in the house was dead, or nearly dead, and close to the door, where I think it came in on someone’s shoe. The cat showed me that one. She worried about it lying next to her water dish. We’ve seen one other scorpion, this one alive, on the porch, and I’ve gotten in the habit of shaking out shoes and garments that I haven’t worn for a while, and checking out the situation before I sit in a chair on the porch. Just in case, you know?

I’m not sure what to think about all the bugs here. Each year we seem to have a particular species that reproduces out of control, and I wonder if the nearby citrus and avocado groves cause that, using chemicals, or if it’s a natural cycle. Last year earwigs bred like crazy. They mainly stayed outdoors, but sometimes crawled into the house where they died, then couldn’t be vacuumed up easily because their pinchers stuck in the carpet. Another year it was pill bugs, another year something else. The black widows had one alarming, big year. We’re not trying to eradicate whole species, and I like living in a place that’s a little wild—outdoors. But I don’t like the idea of sleeping or sharing food with bugs indoors. If I want to camp, I’ll go camping. So we draw the line and sometimes wage territorial wars with the local crawlies at our front door.

***

To me being privileged means having more than one’s basic needs met, and there are degrees of privilege, and it is relative, and basically meaningless. I’m more privileged than some people I know, and less privileged than some I know. But all I can really say about that is what I see on the surface.

It’s tragic that so few people in the world have adequate food, water, sanitation, shelter, clothing, necessary transportation, education, rest, safety, security, and health care, even some people in the US. Those should be basic, subsistence level expectations, especially considering how far we’ve come technologically in this world. Unfortunately those advances seem to be reserved for the wealthiest people in the wealthiest countries, for those living under certain forms of government and economics. Basic civil and human rights should also be considered subsistence level—everyone should have them. Not everyone does, even in the most economically “privileged” countries. We can’t even agree on what civil and human rights people should have.

But I also think many people in the world have a skewed notion of what it is to live under what they consider privilege (i.e. better apparent economic or social conditions than theirs). It looks easier. In many ways it is. It’s no guarantee one will be happy.

Comfort exists on many levels. People in wealthier conditions still get sick (health care doesn’t guarantee health), suffer, die, lose loved ones, fall in and out of love, get abused, depressed, lonely, fearful, deal with pain (much of it hidden and not obvious to anyone else—some physical, some psychological or emotional). They experience disability, addiction, disasters, worries, or slip through the cracks of their society. Many so-called privileged people live very unhappy lives, or don’t only because they overcome adversity no one else would guess at. Just because some people have their basic subsistence levels met in ways that too many in the world don’t, doesn’t guarantee they won’t still lead difficult or even miserable lives. Conversely, among those who don’t even have what we consider the basics, you’ll find some fairly happy people.

A lot of this may have to do with choice, though much of it doesn’t, but let’s face it, being privileged doesn’t guarantee you’ll make the right choices—or that your family members will. Some of this also has to do with individual thresholds. Some of us handle certain types of stress more easily, some have chronic health issues, and some have an inability to think we have choices, even when we do.

So the idea of “privilege” doesn’t really tell you how much one will suffer or how happy one will be.

No one can know another’s pain. We can try, we can develop our empathy and compassion to a deeper level and care about others, try to walk in another’s shoes. But we don’t live the other’s life. To judge what another considers his or her suffering, abuse, or pain, is simply judgmental and likely unjust. Privilege is relative, and can exist right alongside extreme suffering.

So in many ways privilege as we think of it is pretty much meaningless. It seems to me that instead of nurturing a notion of being privileged or not (as if one should feel guilty for being what others consider privileged), it’s more important to nurture compassion, unconditional love, mutual concern. This isn’t to say there isn’t a grossly unbalanced distribution of wealth and power in this world. Obviously there is. It’s also clear that a wealthy person in a position of power is more likely to help his wealthy peers than those he doesn’t consider his equals. But we have to be careful of what we allow to separate us, of allowing ourselves an “us and them” mindset.

The idea of measuring privilege separates us.

The idea of all people belonging to the same human family with equal rights to the basics, and with equal capacity for suffering and happiness, connects us.

***

What does privilege mean to you?

And while we’re at it, Happy Independence Day!

Far be it from me to judge what exactly happened with Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. I haven’t read it, and I don’t intend to—wouldn’t intend to even if the publisher hadn’t turned around and pulled it off bookstore shelves. But when I read all the off-shoot accounts of the state of book packaging today, I find myself sympathizing at least a tiny bit, as Rachel Pine seems to, with the young author. Not enough to defend her, perhaps, or to excuse what happened, but honestly—what a confusing business this has become.

I recall an old episode of The Avengers on TV, in which a publisher created a computer to crank out formula novels, then passed them off as having been written by a human being. I thought for sure that was pure fantasy until I began reading about this plagiarism case. Kaavya Viswanathan’s name is on the book’s copyright page, but according to what I’ve read so is Alloy Entertainment’s. So who is to blame? How did this happen?

While discussing it with my husband earlier today I remembered how my love of the written word manifested itself as a teenager. There were authors who could’ve written anything and I would’ve soaked up their words like gravy. Did I internalize what they said? You betcha. During those years my mind was a sponge, and I fell in love with turns of phrase, ways of using language. I recall teachers marking up my papers when I unconsciously used English spellings rather than American for words like “colour” and “favourite” because so many of my favorite authors at the time were British. (In those days the US printings of their books weren’t edited for such things as they are today.)

I don’t remember now whether it was Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave or The Hollow Hills that I first read as a hardcover from the library, then picked up as a paperback and read it again. At the end of the paperback I found a misprint of a few paragraphs, where lines were interchanged and some were left out. I marked up corrections in the margin without referring to the hardcover. A few months later I went back and checked the hardcover. I’d remembered the precise wording. I had apparently memorized those passages my first time through.

I couldn’t do that today. Today I don’t even know which of the two books it happened with. I seem to recall it had a yellowish cover and that makes me think it had to be The Hollow Hills. My brain has aged enough that such a feat would be unlikely though I may be every bit as impressionable today. It would take at least two or three readings for me to memorize even a favorite author’s wording now. I also like to think I’d realize I was remembering another author’s words, not making up my own. But who’s to know? No one offered me half a million dollars to write a book at seventeen. While that could seem to the bystander to be a lot like winning the lottery, I suspect to many writers it would mean that much more pressure to produce a product.

In Viswanathan’s words, according to Rachel Pine:

“I wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words.” She has also apologized, repeatedly, profusely, and to my ears, genuinely. But she also seems at a loss to explain just what happened. In an interview with the New York Times, she said, “I really thought the words were my own; I guess it’s just been in my head,” she added. “I feel as confused as anyone about it, because it happened so many times.”

When I heard about Viswanathan’s novel I thought to myself it was obvious her editor had never read the Megan McCafferty novels she’s said to have lifted from, or surely this would’ve been noticed early on. Then I read this in the New York Times piece:

The relationships between Alloy and the publishers are so intertwined that the same editor, Claudia Gabel, is thanked on the acknowledgments pages of both Ms. McCafferty’s books and Ms. Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.”

So what happened there? And I wonder, are the days of the lone writer crafting a book from his or her heart gone?

In an off-shoot article, John Barlow paints a portrait of his own book packaging nightmare, and leaves me wondering why so many people need to be involved in writing a story, only to leave the author hanging out on a limb, alone, held responsible for the end product—which perhaps isn’t even really his creation. I think books are better when not written by committee. Look what that’s done to television—hundreds of channels and, more often than not, nothing new worth watching.

In this case it appears the author is to blame, and perhaps others are to blame as well. In the end it’s all about honesty, not passing off another’s work as your own. I’m relieved there’s so much outcry, because I worry these days about how accepting we are of dishonesty and half truths, and how eager our leaders are to repeat untruths until (they hope) we come to believe them as true. But it’s also important to me, in this world where we seem to have to cast blame, that the right party or parties be named. I suspect the author will take the brunt of this, while the business entities involved will continue to do business as usual.

***

After a quiet day yesterday, I woke early this morning (early for me, anyway), to sirens, thinking I’ve never lived in a place with so many sirens, even when we rented within a couple miles of Montgomery Field and one of the busiest intersections in San Diego. But here we’re right off the main road that runs through town. This morning the sirens were especially disconcerting, and I decided maybe I’d had too much coffee.

Then I realized yesterday began the fourth anniversary of the Gavilan Fire, which started in Fallbrook on February 10, 2002. During the course of that fire we were surrounded by flames, the air so full of smoke we had to keep all the windows closed. Wildfires came within a mile of our home on three sides—west, north, and south. For a few hours I sat with packed suitcases, the cat in her carrier, and the dog on a leash, so I could leave in a hurry if needed.

We avoided disaster then, but many others in town didn’t. An amateur radio repeater system went into use. People were evacuated. Forty-three homes were destroyed. A total of 5,000 acres burned, much of it on Camp Pendleton, as well as along De Luz Road, which runs through a beautiful stretch of the Santa Margarita River basin and includes a wildlife study area full of sycamores, live oaks, and other trees, as well as animal life. Hillsides were denuded of chaparral, transformed into brown, charred earth.

That fire wasn’t as large or nearly as devastating as the Cedar Fire, two years ago, but it struck so close to home it’s no wonder, after the past couple of weeks of dry, summer-like weather and an earlier forecast of wind for today and tomorrow, the sirens made me nervous this morning.

As of a year ago, the De Luz preserve has wireless wildfire sensors. Wildflowers bloomed profusely in the burned areas by spring of 2003. (Scroll down the linked page for wildflower photos.) And in fact, some of the plantlife in Southern California actually depends on our preponderance of wildfires.

***

Now that I’ve talked myself out of fire and siren anxiety, and gotten carried away again with online research, I’m headed back into the mystery novel. I’m on the third draft, and that’s nearly done. I’m happy with how this is going, feeling enthused about this book, and anxious to finish, to get on with the final edits—the minor, nit-picky stuff—then finish and send it off.

I’ll be off-line for a few days.