US Tour Week 14...! CA OR

2006-12-18

A week of sun, synchronicity, surprises and tumultuous weather adventures as our tour begins to draw to a close...

Thursday, Dec 7/06 to Fresno CA:
Jeanyne Slettom reported that her husband said after our visit: "Those are such nice people; we really must keep in touch with them." This amazes me, as I feel increasingly morally compelled to write on our "Billeting the Jonsson-Good" web page that hosts are generally exhausted by the time we leave. It really caused me, too, to wonder how differently we would all feel and act in life if, in general, we thought people were thinking: Such nice people; we really must keep in touch.

And this from a man who cooked us eggs benedict for breakfast! I needed to record the moment Jeanyne went outside to pick the first lemon from her backyard lemon tree. We have a peach and plum tree at home and I have considered their existence a miracle from the first moment I discovered the Okanagan Valley. Still, a lemon tree actually bearing fruit..! Another miracle.

Among the many insightful things the two said about themselves and their country, they shared the notion that many Americans harbour a kind of "escape fantasy" - a "where would I go if I had to leave the US?" Certainly we have met the heartbreak of an awful lot of people who do not suffer well the United States' war endeavours. John's heart is in Bolivia. He administers a programme to set up healthcare clinics all over that country - an astounding project based on an anonymous donor's resources, in co-operation with local governments.

Jeanyne and I met through a hymn competition. She is the Managing Director of the Center for Process Theology at Claremont and when the school put out a call for hymns reflecting a process view of the universe, I wrote them a wry letter: "Let me get this straight: Process-relational theology sees the universe as creative, interrelational, dynamic, and open to the future. Yet you are asking for new music of faith reflecting this dynamic co-existence in texts that would 'preferably fit old hymn tunes'". Her response was genuine and friendly and we began exchanging thoughts about the world, the church and then our tour.

So, we came to worship at Claremont College chapel - the "Refrigerator" Joe Shore had called it, on account of its tall, rectangular appearance. (Actually it was quite beautiful). Both he and MaryAnne Parrott arrived with many other students and faculty; when you see folks you know from a previous day on a trip like this, they feel like old friends when they walk in.

The service was to be the only one of the season of Advent, as the college was finishing its term and community worships. So, it embraced the nativity story in carols and lessons - with two anthems radiantly sung by the college "Chorale", a dance that turned into a "Rose Labyrinth" for all, led by the Spirit of Movement dance group, and some music by me. I had the chance to say, as I have been saying in the season of Advent, that our Mary was never "gentle, meek nor mild" - and that if I launched into quoting the great rant that we call her "Magnificat" from Luke, the listeners might begin to bristle and say, "Who do those Canadians think they are, coming here and talking a mess of politics in the church..?!" Then I got to sing my song "Handmaid" in which Mary responds to Gabriel's invitation to birth a saviour - with her own ideas.

That afternoon, we made our way out of the Southern California rolling hills, wanting to make good headway toward the San Francisco area before the next day. When the I-5 proved to be rather empty of habitation, we scooted over to the parallel, smaller 99 Highway. There, we drove through Italian and Chicano-sounding communities, even Scandinavian theme parks. The smell of pig manure rose up and remained for the entire, redolent distance between south and north. So strong was it that I woke up feeling the way I do when I have breathed big city pollution overnight.

Our RV park was the Wooden Shoe, once again sitting practically on the highway off-ramp. The kids and I did a walk-around to give David some elbow-room in dinner-making. Across from the home-made playground equipment, the main house's porch was fully decked for Christmas. A decorated tree sparkled through the main window while plastic swans held houseplants swooning from their insides, wreaths and lines of LED lights encircled Mickey Mouse - who appeared rather jolly with a Santa hat on.

Friday, Dec 8/06 Berkeley CA::
Strange. As we are driving along the clouded highway from Fresno toward Berkeley, we feel a small tremour in the van. Slowly but surely, power cuts out in the acceleration; we are gliding to a halt on the Number 99. 'Oh, for goodness sake, what this time?' I think as I set my computer aside. I imagine calling ahead to our Berkeley host, Susan Willm, to inform her that we will be late or non-existent for our concert. David stares out onto the bleak highway. Turns the ignition, the van roars back into action and it never happens again. Dirt in the lines? Pig manure in the air..?

So, we did get to meet Susan at Epworth United Methodist Church as lights were beginning to twinkle on in town and the rain to fall. Susan is a forthright and warm woman who was wearing jeans, a kitchen apron and silver Oz shoes when she met us in the sanctuary. At dinner, she was pleased to tell us about her work in helping gay/lesbian issues find a voice in the workplaces of the country. We were joined at the meal by dear friends of our own Keri Wehlander: Peggy and Don Alter. Peggy has taught at the various schools of theology in Berkeley forever, and even though retired, says she could not decline an invitation to teach a course this term about Psychology and Religion. As she said, "For so long, psychology has dismissed religion; I couldn't miss the opportunity to teach this one!"

We had an excellent crowd for our Epworth concert - though the number was small. I began: "In Albuquerque they said, 'You are here by divine appointment;' in Garden Grove they said, 'Welcome home!' and in Berkeley, they said, 'Would you shove the tea down this way?'" When you feel at home, it's easy to sing. Together, we made melody and were silent together. Children came up to sing with me (which always makes my day) and one little girl in the front row did interpretive dance to all the songs after that. It was a practically perfect night.

Peggy and Don's house sits nested along a winding street on the steep hillside of Berkeley. The rain was coming down quite steadily, and Don urged us not to turn our wheels fully in to the curb when we parked or the water rushing down the road would be blocked and turn in to the house next door. Our two hosts were former missionaries - she a teacher and he a business administrator for a school. Peggy describes herself as a fierce teacher, and i know the sense of the word she means: relentless in the pursuit of learning.

Saturday, Dec 9/06 Berkeley CA:
The big bay windows that had mirrored us back to ourselves in the living room the night before opened out in the morning to the fog-filled San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge hung far in the distance, framed by the tops of the wind-swept pines from the yard below. The city itself sat enshrouded in mist, silent and solitary.

Peggy suggested we take the children to the Grossology exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science. And when we did the math on the children's ages, it seemed they were all 3 at the perfect developmental stages for an educational exhibit of this description. Furthermore, we decided that it might only require the brain-power of one supervising adult. I won the lottery and David took the kids in, past the enormous climb-on sculptures of a sperm whale and a DNA helix. The Grossology exhibit explores the incredible "abilities" of the human body; Nicole reports a highlight being a game in which people throw balls into a giant nose until eventually the nose "sneezes" it all back out at them. Oh gosh, the fun I missed.

Instead, I sat in the van, overlooking the chilly bay, the wind blustering the plastic tarpaulins on the rooves overhead, typing out the previous days' adventures in Tour Logs. It was a perfect hour and a half. When my battery ran out, I arrived in the Lawrence Hall in time to find my family emerging from their odyssey of disgusting. Reading the exhibit sign, I realised that the reason I had recognised the term "grossology" was because the exhibit was co-created by a BC organization. Another proud Canadian.

If I had thought cycling in Vancouver required nerves and thighs of steel, it seemed nothing compared to Berkeley. A more gritty and determined lot I have never seen, their brows furrowed with intent as they push their way along steadily upward weaving roads. We enjoyed lunch in the campus funky downtown - still on a slope.

Our evening's destination was the culmination of an amazing series of events, the meanings of which I may perhaps never know. A last-minute cancellation by an area church caused me to drop a line to a dear acquaintance to ask whether there was something else I should be doing in Berkeley. A three-way conversation began between her and 2 other women I had never met, rapid-fire plans formulating for a one-week's notice concert at a denominational centre in Berkeley. I watched with eyes bulging as e-mails whizzed by me, making plans for: whom to tell, where to promote, what to eat for dinner, who would do which job. Then - just as suddenly - the event was cancelled. Two of the three had suddenly been plunged into family emergencies.

Julia McCray-Goldsmith was the third, and even as she apologised for the project's abrupt ending, she entitled her e-mail "... and a crazy idea". Husband, John, was having a birthday and they might make a whacky last minute invitation to work colleagues and residents at their "intentional community" housing block, to come to a Christmas/Birthday drop-in on Saturday afternoon and that David and I might perform. I love crazy ideas. And whacky friends.

So, we loaded in our equipment (grateful again for a sound system that is small and unpretentious) into the common room that is the corner unit of this block of apartments, greeted by small children and tricycles, by Erin and John stringing Christmas lights along the wall of windows, and Julia with a marvelous warm hug. The smell of mulled cider and curry was in the air (a California kind of mix, I think) and a fire crackling in the hearth.

Folks dropped in and out, sitting around tables to talk and eat. John is an investment finder, Julia is diocesan Faith Formation Co-ordinator for the Episcopal church, and they both used to work for Habitat for Humanity. John is also a multi-instrumentalist, but admits he doesn't get out much these days (We understand; if we weren't doing it for a living, we wouldn't have time for music either!) So, he sat down with his bass and flew alongside us on Christmas carol jams and accompanied us on some performance pieces of mine which he had never heard before in his life. At one point, I turned to the gathering of friends and said, "Do you know how hard it is to do what John is doing here?" Turned out the room was filled with musicians and - YES - they did know how hard it was. I hope it was the kind of birthday party John most needed to have.

We slept in Fran's opposite corner home. As Julia said, the co-operative is like family and they often borrow one another's apartments when the owners are away. The sounds of rain and wind mixed and muffled the moaning of the distant railway in the night.

Sunday, Dec 10/06 Sacramento CA:
Still, as David says, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. We had to rise at 5:30 am to get ourselves on the road to Sacramento for church! The dull skies were a match for our tired spirits as we watched daylight return on the drizzly highway. It is possible that we need to exchange our sandals for shoes, again!

Such a collection of people ready to help us as we arrived at St Mark's United Methodist Church! Anne met us in the parking lot, pointing us to Boni and Terry, who would co-ordinate our set-up for the morning, another Anne took care of Isaac, Joyce had made lunch for us all, Steve and Michael were the sound team, the children's choir alumnae were ready to usher, Linda Dew-Hiersoux, our clergy, greeted us in worship. We spent the early part of the morning singing and sharing in the telling of the nativity story with children 5-12, and got to light the Advent candles as a family in the latter service. It is clear that these people have a history of singing with Jim and Jean Strathdee!

Jim and Jean have had a bit of a standing invitation for me to come down their way to sing at their church for a long time. As I said to folks in the concert audience later that night, I finally e-mailed them last year and said, "HEY! I'm coming now!", to which they replied, "OK. We're outta here!" Again - just my luck - when I finally get my act together to come to my heroes' church, they are just leaving their position, after 16 years. Still, their support was clear, and their presence felt. We heard from folks who had been in to visit them since Jim's hospital visit that the surgery had gone as expected and that things were normal. Somehow, the news annoys me; couldn't we have more dramatic language than "normal"? Hate that word.

Our concert was a late afternoon one, rolling nicely into a congregational supper that I almost missed for talking. The young ushers take the prize for the best greeting of concert-goers upon entry: No-one entered escaping a multiple-armed hug before they found a pew. The church wins the best-decorated sanctuary award for the Night Sky they created above the large chancel - a series of large hanging stars covering its entire depth. Folks sang along and a gutsy trio of women at the back danced when invited. I joked that I knew they were getting over the shock of learning that Jim and Jean had not written "Make a Joyful Noise" and "Like a Rock"; they told me later I was right! I introduced "Hope is a Candle", saying I didn't expect them to know it, however they did, and the ushers rushed up on stage to help me lead it, as the Joyful Voices choir.

It was a great kind of day to end our performances in the US - for that was what it was: the end. Unbelievable. We stayed at the home of a woman named Janice, who, beside being a conservation advisor for companies doing work with any environmental impact in California, is installing wood panelling in her new house to give it a woodsy feel. I called our bedroom the "Davey Crockett Room" because of its raw wood bed frame, map of the old west on the wall and coonskin cap on the bedstead.

Monday, Dec 11/06 Sacramento CA:
Janice was up as soon as the children made it clear that the late bedtime was going to have no effect on their usual waking hour. She whipped us up a batch of pumpkin wheat waffles which were good for the soul and sent us out the door with wee mandarin oranges, sweet muffins and a frog pen.

This was our morning to visit with Jim and Jean Strathdee - a promise and a plan months in the making. In fact, they were to have had us overnight on this Bay-Sacramento weekend, but the timing did not work in favour of this, as both of their surgeries ended up in late November / early December. They showed us "our" room with some regret, and their loft-like office, which has had both their previous work offices from St Mark's fold into it, and their chalet-studio in the back. Now we know what to imagine when we hear they have made a new album!

Jim played for us the only one of the many songs he has planned to record in this period of recuperation (mixing up - as many do - the healing process with a 'shift' in work scheduling priorities). The song was a tribute to the beauty of children's innate spirituality, through the lens of an experience he had many years ago when his, then, little son Michael tugged at his arm at night and invited his dad to come outside and "listen to the dark". I feared my weeping would turn to crying, or perhaps we all did, so we turned to talking about our weekend, which Jim and Jean had helped us plan. When they heard how well the Progressive Christians event had gone, they both lapsed into appreciations for John Cobb. Jean has kept little notes from the last time she head him speak, and they have informed her thinking many times as she has planned her own preaching or leading.

I had planned to keep the visit short for their sake and found that 3 hours flew by anyway. At our friends' suggestion, we had lunch at La Bou - a little soup and sandwich place on the strip not far from their house. As David ordered meals, Nicole coloured and Patrick listened to his new radio (both bought to assist the Marine Reserves raise money for kids at Christmas). From the restroom immediately next door to our dining tables came a little birdlike voice echoing in a cubicle: "highway to hell...... highway to hell...." Another child walked out of the lavatory, looking backward over his shoulder, eyes wide.

David bought chains, easing his anxious nerves as we approached the trek northward, and I managed a little Christmas romp in a craft store. It became obvious that we were going to have to sit out a bit of rush traffic by this hour, so a little grocery shopping helped us, and so did a guy named Joe. Joe came over to - you guessed it - marvel at the Little Guy trailer, and just as he asked me where we were from, I noticed his hat, which had the Ironman Canada logo on it. He was a huge fan, supporter of his competitor brother and relentless volunteer for the world-renowned triathlon. He was incredibly pleased to meet virtual relatives. I gave him a Summerland Sweet syrup as a welcome back gift, and he asked the children about their trip. As we prepared to leave, he said goodbye to the children: "Thank your lucky stars you have parents who are adventurers. You are getting to see and do things that people dream of their whole lives." I called to him as we drove away: "The cheque is in the mail!"

"Adventurers" is the very word we like to use to describe ourselves, and some days even Isaac has said, "We not goin' on an aventure, Mummy? No aventure." David and I are aware that, on our entire trip, we have never once heard anyone say, "Jeez, I wish I were doing what you're doing." We don't expect it (because even we agree that we are nuts), but Joe is the closest we have come. I think the kids were listening when he told them that he had never travelled anywhere in his life until age 15 when his dad said, "C'mon, kids, we're going for a trip." They drove for 2 hours to Lake Tahoe, stuck their toes in Nevada, turned around and went back home. Joe is an evangelist for adventure, now.

When traffic allowed us out of Sacramento, it was already dark and we made it as far away as Dixon, about 30 minutes away. Having collected e-mail through the hotel here on the way over, we knew the strip. While collecting e-mail again and thinking through the night's accommodations, I realised that even if we made it in to San Francisco at night, we'd have no experience of the place anyway. Why not stop now and settle in for a comfortable night? The kids were very pleased and so began the celebration of our TEAM APPRECIATION. We had a fancy supper (meaning you can order drinks! And dessert!) and listed between us some of the highlights of the tour, low-lights too, and qualities and body-parts that have grown over our time together. Nicole had, just that afternoon, pulled out her second tooth, so it was an auspicious day on many counts.

After all that revelling and sugar, there was no easy falling asleep. Jedi stories were almost jettisoned three times. We considered lying on the children to get them to be still in the hotel bed. What a team... Think I'm going to flip what's left of my lid.

Tuesday, Dec 12/06 San Francisco:
The kids have decided that the next meal is going to be sushi; we grown-ups mused about how, when employers have been generous and the job's been good, sometimes the staff takes THEM out to lunch. They didn't seem to know what we were talking about.

We boated along the highway and into San Francisco in the pouring drizzle by late morning. It was a typical San Francisco day, so I can't complain that I had an inauthentic experience; still, it would have been nice to have seen above the tops of the skyscrapers or out into the bay past the cruise ships in the harbour. We have the distinct sense of being close to home; the city has the tidy and eclectic look of the northwest coast, but with a sassier feel than Vancouver.

And so we wandered along Jefferson St, with the Blessed Stroller of Beacon between us, past the long rows of tourist shops - t-shirts, jewelry, a chocolate store, Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, the enticing smell of the Sourdough Bakery, the Wax Museum (where movie stars stood on a revolving plate for picture-taking), the gamesman who bet he could guess where you were from, the long Fisherman's Wharf and Harbour.

I don't know why, but the first thing we did was to drift in to the Amusing America museum - a mysterious storehouse of historical amusement park mechanical games. The hall was as dark as a circus side-show, and every inch filled with glass-topped wooden boxes from every age - fortune-telling machines, the Thimble Dancer puppets and dixieland bands, Laughing Sal - a giant guffawing woman described as having "entertained or terrified children for 100 years", a private movie of the great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, souvenir penny squishers, mechanical scenes like a circus or French execution, "peep shows" through the ages, and "Test the Fire of Your Kiss". I paid to see the white and black people and farm animals all go about their turn of the century business on the farmyard scene and then to have my hand scanned for a palm reading. Here the description read: "For centuries, people have been relying on the 100% accuracy of these completely trustworthy means of understanding the future upon which to base their important life decisions. One can only imagine what ill fate might have befallen them if they had merely trusted their lives to chance." It appears that a long-lost relative will give me money soon. Well, it's been weeks since I saw my parents....

The obvious thing to do was to hop a cable car and sit on the outdoor edge to roll past the houses and shops of San Francisco. The hills rolled up and down, the cable car squealed and jolted to a stop in the middle of every intersection, we gazed out upon the total grey wall that we were told was the Golden Gate Bridge. In the downtown, we hopped off amid tight, high buildings and watched as the cable car was turned around on its lazy susan wheel. It was not raining here. Over the mountain again and back to the harbour where the climate was completely different, passing swanky shops trading in glitter and glitz: pink Christmas trees, designer clothes, sushi places we couldn't eat at for fear of over-running our meter, the Cable Car Laundry Mat, and later through Chinatown, the "True Sunshine Episcopal Church".

Isaac and I had a big disagreement about whether he could go into the public Men's Room at the Wharf. I have tried to crack down on supervising him closely, and his new tour-induced attachment to going to the gender-correct room has caused us some losses of parental control. Besides, David had told me what it was like in there. Our argument ended with my carrying him bodily out of the Women's Room and across to the dripping wharf restaurant area. David met us with our paper plate of cracked, cooked crab and we both hunkered down, Isaac in his stroller and I on a nearby dollie, and pulled crab bits out of shells, nicely reconciled. The sourdough bread that came with it was a perfect match.

I wasn't going to have any Ben and Jerry's ice cream with the kids, but I could see that it was of a vastly higher order than most mortal desserts, so I gave in. And then ate the kids' leftovers. And yes, there was something magnificent about driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in fog that only allowed layers of it to emerge at a time. Christmas lights appeared and disappeared, hills rose and descended and the traffic, though at full rush hour, had an almost dance-like quality to it at moments. Five cars traded places simultaneously ahead of us, allemand-left, with a beauty and grace that was almost - well - Canadian.

Wednesday, Dec 13/06 to Oregon:
I do believe we were absolutely the only campers in the entire state park, near Leggett CA. We awoke to rain simply pelting down, as if to underline that we were truly headed back to Vancouver. Even if we had wanted to hurry, it would have been a shame; the Redwood Highway of Northern California is a stunning piece of the globe and demands many stops along the way. We decided it wouldn't change our itinerary much to drive along the Valley of the Giants, which parallels the winding 101. Along it the Coast Redwoods tower magnificently overhead to heights of up to 360 feet. They are beyond impressive at hundreds of years old, however the Drive-Through Tree, found in a small park just off the roadway, was fully 1500 years old - with less than a quarter of it living tree tissue, but still going strong. Beside it, a broad walk-through stump invited reflection on the history it has seen, a small grove of 5 redwoods had grown together at the base, creating a circle of friends called the "Shrine Cathedral Trees". Near the exit a deceptively dumb attraction called the Drive-On Tree turned out to be the end of a tree trunk a foot taller than we adults - and 3200 years old! Lines indicated events in American history like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but worked backwards to the signing of the Magna Carta and the first Crusades. And THAT wasn't very far into the heart of the tree..! I can't fathom it.

Later, we learned that the Redwoods, which used to populate all of the forests in this area, grow to such heights despite a root system that extends no deeper than 8 feet. Instead the trees send the small "filaments" of their roots out to 100 feet widths, in search of nutrients but also to wind their roots together with other trees for mutual support. Exactly!! They only survive on the wet coast, with the fog as protection from both heat and cold, and they themselves transpire 1000 gallons of water a year. We discovered a giant that was described as having been previously growing on the diagonal, but had righted itself by only growing branches on its opposite side. Patrick mused, as we left it, "Imagine deciding what part of you to grow next!" A neat reflection when one is on a tour in which we almost get to do just that.

However, when we looked at it later, it appeared we had driven merely 30 miles all day(!) and that made our next day's travel look rather wearying, so we tucked our heads and stepped on it until we managed to cross the line into Oregon. Stopping at a gas station, we did the usual full-family run for the restrooms and the kids lobbied me to buy treats. I allow them to buy something small once a day if they read the ingredients and avoid additives. Patrick walked back up to the counter while I was there and apologized to the server that he had to return his gum because, "I just discovered it contains aspartame." The woman was smilingly taken aback, and I thought she was going to laugh aloud at him for his seriousness, but instead she asked him what that was about. By the time Isaac came bunny-hopping up in his pyjamas with his first dollar bill and proclaimed to her that he wanted a candy because "I like money!", she was so amused she just gave him the candy and the bill back.

The rain has never let up for a moment, swaying between drizzle and showers all day. We took up a position at an RV Park in Port Brookings Harbour, and discovered we were facing out into the roaring ocean surf. This, we said to the kids, is going to be gorgeous in the morning - such romance! Well, the romance dulled slightly when I had to go out in the soaking wind to re-position the power cord a few times so the safety would stop tripping.

Later, when the children's own gale force had abated and David and I sat quietly with guitar and computer on our laps, the wind began to blow in steadily increasing gusts. David looked over to say, "Well, I did hear the words 'gale force winds' today." Oh great. I imagined us on the coast of Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina slowly rattling in, and nowhere to go. So, we unplugged my carefully positioned electrical art and David backed the camper out of our storm-view seats with the top still up and three unsuspecting bodies in it. Then, he turned us around so the wind would slide up behind us and be gone. Settled in and satisfied with the re-arrangement we found ourselves and our neighbours plunged into darkness - a power outage. Time for bed. We hoped this was the last installment of the day's adventures.

It was not.

The rain increased, slamming against the top of the camper with the sound and feel of pellets. Just before sleep time, I opened the door to make another break for the bathroom, and discovered a regiment of rain running with bayonets toward me. For the first time on the tour, I peed in a bucket and flung it out the door. David and I tucked ourselves into our little bed, pulling the blankets up to our noses, and waited, convinced the rain and wind would gradually abate over the night. In about 15 minutes, we realised that even IF the wind should stop pounding on our children's little canvas home, we would STILL stay up all night listening to hear if it was GOING to worsen. We made a bed of piled sleeping bags for Patrick to sleep on across the front seats, slipped Isaac between us and Nicole across the foot of our bed. (And this bed is not quite Double size!). We jammed that canopy back down and the camper nicely stopped rocking quite so much. And by the grace of God... we slept.

Next week... well, next week is not even a whole week; it will be... THE END. Don't miss the exciting conclusion to:
Lost..... In...... States......!

Love,
Linnea

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