World Series Tonight

I'm really excited that my cousin Mark and I are going to game two of the World Series tonight at Dodger Stadium. It wasn't cheap but for us two lifelong Dodger faithful it was a must. In my younger years it seemed the Blue Crew was in the series practically every 3 years or so, and I'd say I was spoiled by success and didn't feel a sense of urgency to experience baseball's pre-eminent showcase. There'd always be another opportunity in a couple of years. The Dodgers were in the Series 9 times in the seasons between 1959 and 1988. But now it's been 29 years. If it takes another 29 years there's a good chance I won't be around (I'm 63 now) or will be too feeble to attend! I've been to 3 playoff games but never a Fall Classic, as Tommy Lasorda likes to call it. So now's the time. Tune in at 5:00 and look for us in the Reserved Level, aisle 11, row H.
GO DODGERS!

Moving To San Diego

Joan is now retired, our house has sold, and we'll be on our way to San Diego in a matter of days. Oldest daughter Jeanette made a surprise visit yesterday and presented Joan with her full-time grandmother credentials! The upcoming schedule looks like this: Wednesday the guys from Custom Auctions are coming to take items we aren't moving with us for sale at their weekend auctions. That includes our washer and dryer and some large furniture items like our main couch and formal dining table. We are downsizing to half our current square footage and need to pare things down. (The condo already has a washer and dryer, too.)

 

Thursday the packing crew from Jack & Jeff Transfer, the local Bekins affiliate, will be here. Then on Friday they'll load everything up and take it away. Joan and I will remain in Visalia over the weekend, staying with friends Walt and Sheri Bentley Friday and Saturday nights. Friday we'll go out to dinner with friends. The Bentleys, John and Carole Greening, and Newell and Mary Ann Bringhurst will join us. Then if we can get tickets we hope to see "Holly," the story of Buddy Holly, at the Ice House Theater. Saturday evening the Episcopal Church will have a going-away barbecue for Joan, who has been the principal music minister there for the past seven years. She'll play at her last Sunday service, we'll say good bye to the folks, and then be off to begin our new life in SD.

We Have a Granddaughter!

It is my joy to share with you the birth of our first grandchild! Katherine Belle Jahelka was born at 5:51 P.M. on July 3, 2016 in San Diego to our daughter Marie and son-in-law Robert Jahelka. Katherine weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce and was 18 1/2 inches long. She has a full head of hair and is still sporting her baby blue eyes.

Here she is, stylishly taking it easy in her matching cap, onesie and booties on her color-coordinated crib sheet.

Joan and I have been fortunate to be able to be down here in San Diego helping with meals, shopping and housekeeping so Marie and Robert can deal with the rigors of every-three-hour feedings while trying to snatch sleep two hours at a time. Marie's big sister Jeanette has been pitching in too, making meals. Robert's mom Marcia has been able to help on weekends and Robert's dad kept their Sheltie Link for several days to remove that care from their minds.

        Here are Joan and I holding Katherine in the hospital July 4, the day after she was born.

It is a pleasure to share our blessings with you. This little miracle is already changing our lives!

2015 Gratitude List

Gratitude list for 2015:

Daughter Marie is expecting and due at the end of June with our first grandchild!
Joan and I celebrated our 38th anniversary this August. What a blessing to have her in my life.
Joan and I and daughter Jeanette had a wonderful vacation to Canada, including Montreal, Niagara Falls and Quebec this summer.
We are blessed with dear siblings, including my sisters Sue, Gina and Toni and Joan's sisters Carol and Paula.
We have terrific in-laws too: Marie's husband Robert, Robert's parents Marcia and John, Carol's husband Paul and Paul's dad Hal.
I completed my sixteenth year at College of the Sequoias, a good place to work, with colleagues and students I enjoy. This was my 33rd year as a full-time educator, counting my 17 years at Cucamonga Middle School.
I published my first book this year, Liberally Speaking. I've had a lot of fun having book appearances, signings and discussions.
Though we both have been presented with some new dietary limitations, Joan and I continue to enjoy good health.
I am really enjoying my new car, a Subaru Forester.
It was great to see the LGBT community win marriage equality this year.
It's been very gratifying to see the economic recovery gather momentum this year, with real progress on jobs, the unemployment rate and the lowest gas prices in years.
I am grateful a climate accord was reached in Paris this month. It wasn't as much as is needed but it's the first serious, truly global step in the right direction.
I'm grateful to have been able to play more golf this year and make more friends on the course.
The invention of Facebook has made it easier to keep up better with friends and relatives.
I'm grateful to have made it through another year!

Natoli-Lomanaco Wedding

As promised, here is a picture of many Natoli family members at Saturday's wedding.







The picture includes: Front row: Marie (Natoli) Jahelka, Susan (Natoli) Ruth, Toni Natoli, Laura Natoli and Rebecca LoManaco the happy couple, Jeanette Natoli, Joan Natoli.  Second Row: Robert Jahelka, Katy Ruth, Kevin Ruth, Gina Natoli, Mark Natoli, Eric Ruth, Steve Natoli.  Not pictured: Laura's sisters Maria and Diana, and mother Mary Jane Natoli.







Here is the happy couple exchanging vows.

Cousin Laura Getting Married Today

Today's news is that Joan and I will be heading to Simi Valley for my cousin Laura Natoli's wedding.  She and her loving partner Rebecca LoMonaco will be tying the knot this afternoon at their home.  It promises to be a happy occasion attended by Natolis and friends from all over.  My sister Toni is flying in from Seattle, and Aunt Mary Jane, Laura's mom, will be getting up from her recent bout of pneumonia to be there.  Joan and I will be meeting with daughters Marie and Jeanette and Marie's husband Robert beforehand for a little Mother's Day festivity.

This is our first official family same sex wedding.  It's great to see our state, California, embracing and recognizing people's love without discrimination any more, and it's wonderful to see the acceptance and good wishes of family members old and young.  I hope to have a follow up entry with some pictures. 

Vacation to Oregon and Washington

My wife Joan and I are back from our wonderful whirlwind sixteen-day vacation to Oregon and Washington.  The main highlights were  McKenzie Bridge and Portland in Oregon, Seattle, Washington and Ashland, Oregon.

We spent four days in a cabin on the McKenzie River.  The hamlet of McKenzie Bridge is 46 miles east of Eugene up the McKenzie River in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.  It was four days of restful solitude in the midst of verdant greenery and running water.  We spent many hours just sitting on the porch of the cabin catching up on our reading and watching birds and the occasional river raft expedition go by.  We took a hike one day to nearby Sahalie Falls and Koosah Falls.

                                                                   Koosah Falls

Then it was on to Portland to stay with my dear friend from college, Jeff Deiss.  Joan went to the National Handbell Convention for four days while I chummed around with old friends.  One spectacular view was from the top of a hike up the Columbia River Gorge to a point called Angels Rest.  Here's the view facing west back toward Portland.

Columbia River

 

 

 

 

Next we drove the three hours up to Seattle to spend a couple of nights at my sister Toni's.  A highlight was Seattle's wonderful Arboretum and Japanese Garden. 

Japanese Garden

We also took a fascinating trip to the Museum of Flight at Boeing.  It included everything from the Wright Brothers to spacecraft.  We saw their early production facility, World War I and II planes and took a terrific tour of a B-17.  We ventured into the Space Shuttle's cargo bay and saw the Air Force One used from the presidencies from Kennedy to Nixon.

With Toni and Joan beneath a World War II B-17G Bomber

We then went south to Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  We got to see two plays, "The Taming of the Shrew" and a non-Shakespeare play called "Tenth Muse."  "Tenth Muse" starred Vivia Font, an actress my daughter Marie has worked with in San Diego.  Both plays were superb.  Unfortunately, wildfires near Grants Pass, Oregon, about 30 miles north of Ashland, had filled the air with so much smoke that the two plays we were gong to see in the outdoor Elizabethan Stage theater, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Heart of Robin Hood," were cancelled.  Toni is going to use the vouchers to go back to Ashland and see some more plays when she can get away again.

It was a wonderful trip and provided a great combination of quiet, sightseeing and time with old friends.  Soon enough we will return to the frenetic pace of being back at work, but will start refreshed and with fond memories to look back on. 

Loving the National Parks

My oldest daughter visited us for the weekend, and yesterday we spent the day at Sequoia National Park.  I was reminded again how great our national parks are, and for so many reasons.  To start with, they preserve the rare and the beautiful.  The Giant Forest area of Sequoia, which includes the General Sherman tree, the largest living thing on earth, is about an hour and a half drive from home.  Without the national park idea, these trees would all be gone, cut down for lumber.  As it is, we have only three percent of the redwood forests that existed 150 years ago.  They would be extinct had they not been placed in a federal preserve as urged by John Muir and guarded by the "buffalo soldiers" beginning in 1890.


The parks preserve natural ecosystems, giving us baseline examples by which to measure the health of the natural world.  They give us welcome respites from the noise and grit of the modern world, and that in turn seems to bring out the best in the human spirit.  As Jeanette and I climbed Moro Rock or hiked the Alta Trail we came across people from many different countries.  We heard conversation in many tongues, both identifiable and mysterious, and  the common denominators were happiness and friendliness.  People were universally in a good mood, smiling and laughing, faces gazing upward to the canopy in wonder or to the sculpted horizon in awe.  Brotherhood reigned as folks shared their impressions, asked directions or shared sights and pictures with complete strangers in pidgin or gestures.  The atmosphere at a national park gives me hope that maybe someday international problems can be surmounted and we can all get along.  There is something about unspoiled nature that brings out the positive in people.

A Wedding Day

Joan and I are going to Jaclyn Evans' wedding tomorrow, where she will marry Russell Roben. Jaclyn's grandparents, "Boots" and Leonard Evans, came out to California from back east in that great American internal migration after World War II. They and Joan's parents Joe and Esther made the move together, plunging into the land of dreams by the blue Pacific to build their lives in the setting of the expanding opportunities of the Golden West. My parents too transplanted to sunny California in those same years. So Joan and her sisters were raised alongside the Evans children, not blood relatives but close enough that both sets of kids referred to the other's parents as aunt and uncle. They all grew up and had their own families. It seems like just a couple of years ago at Easter when our Marie and Bill and Sue's Jaclyn were both infants. We put them on a bed together and they rolled their heads toward each other, staring with rapt attention and communicating through a series of googling noises, evoking oohs and aahs from all the parents and grandparents. But it wasn't just the year before last; it was over twenty-five years ago! Is that even possible? Marie's been married a year and now it's Jaclyn's turn. Boots and Leonard have been retired for years, Joe and Esther and my parents are no longer with us and Joan and I are closer to 60 than fifty ourselves. Where could the time have gone? I guess what I'm taking away from this is to savor each moment. Each is precious and irretrievable. As we share in Jaclyn and Russell's big day and celebrate the beginning of their lives together we are also reminded of the speed with with everything changes. We are always in the process of creating new beginnings as the cavalcade of life unfolds before our eyes.

Marie's Wedding

This past Saturday my younger daughter Marie was married in San Diego. She arranged a wonderful service in a traditional California mission style Catholic Church. We had a great reunion of family members and friends and a chance to catch up on their goings on around the country. For instance, on Sunday we had a birthday for a cousin's two-year-old, the Natoli clan toured and had lunch in Little Italy, and other cousins arrived from Ohio just in time after having to fly standby. For our first daughter Jeanette it was an opportunity to help and take care of her little sister one last time, in this instance as maid of honor. For my wife and me it was one of the happiest and proudest days of our lives.

Marie cried practically the whole way as I led her down the aisle. She has never looked more beautiful and radiant as when she and Robert held hands at the altar. They are so much in love. To me as her father it is very gratifying he is a young man with such evident good character, work habits and ambition. He also let me beat him on the golf course, demonstrating he is quite the diplomat as well.

The reception featured excellent food and a great selection of danceable tunes from the 40's through the 70's. You should have seen my wife Joan on the dance floor! Robert's brother Richard gave the finest best man wedding toasts I have ever heard. Jeanette gave a fine one too, focusing on how Marie and Robert can let their hair down with humor and just be silly, and how much fun they are to be around.

This is obviously a profound passage in the young couple's lives, and also for us as parents as well. That relationship will never be exactly the same, and that is just how it is intended to be.

The new Mr. and Mrs. are now honeymooning in Kauai.

"Now I've Seen Everything" Department

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. You just never know when something absolutely bizarre is about to take place. One of those Twilight Zone kind of moments happened to my daughter Marie in San Diego on Thursday.

There she was watching the local news on TV when on came a story about an accident. Some dufus had run into a fire hydrant and broken it off from its moorings. The broadcast had footage of the resulting huge, photogenic geyser spewing water onto an adjacent three-story commercial building. The report continued that the water had pooled on the building's roof. Then the weight of the water caused the roof to collapse. You can see a report with a news photo of the incident here.

What a freakish turn of events, she was thinking. And then she started noticing how familiar that building was looking. Now where, where--oh no! That was the building with the bridal shop, the one where she'd bought her wedding dress, where they were keeping it until they made the alterations. Yes, THAT building. The one that was flooded, and with the roof caved in.

What a disaster. When she phoned she was incredulous, stunned and in a mild state of panic. The wedding's in January and things like wedding dresses can take a long time to find, fit and fix. Fortunately, she was able to contact another shop the very next day that was able to track down the same dress from the same maker and make it available to her.

It was only after that that I could say this is the kind of event that seems horrible at the time but is good for a lot of laughs in the retelling over the years. Something like this is better than anything somebody could make up.

Now everyone can relax. Or maybe not. Who knows what crazy improbability is going to happen next? Life is just one darn thing after another, but at least is serves to keep things interesting.

Daughters

My wife and I are going to visit our single, young adult daughters this weekend. We live in Visalia, roughly in the middle of the state. We'll stop by Jeanette's for lunch in the eastern suburban Los Angeles area after about a three and a half hour drive. We will want to discuss arrangements with her. She is finishing up classes at a community college and getting ready to transfer to a four-year school. We'll then proceed down to San Diego and check into a hotel. Hopefully the presidential debate will go on as scheduled, since I'm looking forward to it.

Saturday morning we'll get together with Marie. That afternoon we'll see a matinee performance of a play at the Globe Theater she's stage managing. It's called "Back, Back, Back" and has a baseball theme. That is probably one reason she wanted me to see it. We'll likely spend some more time with her in the late afternoon before she has to go back for the evening performance. She is immersed in her chosen work and off to a good start on her career path. Then it will be back home on Sunday.

It's too bad how family arrangements change and make maintaining relationships more difficult. I suppose it is a natural part of life. Kids eventually move out and start lives of their own. That is a good thing, of course, since one of the main reasons you are raising them is to help them become capably independent. It makes me realize how easy it was to take for granted having them around the house for eighteen years. Now it's a big production to make connections.

The lesson for me is to cherish the times we do have together and to be grateful for the the wonderful relationship my wife and I have. When all is said and done, I'm feeling that a satisfying family situation is probably the best thing in life.