Grandpa's Obituary

Walter Olds 89, died of cancer on August 17, 2007, at his home in Berkeley, where he had lived for the past 54 years. Walter was born on a farm in Iowa in 1918 and learned carpentry from his grandfather, with whom he lived while attending high school. Walter was a quiet and private person, who designed and built the leaded glass and most of the furniture in the family home. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1942 with degrees in architecture and civil engineering. While waiting in the university library for his girlfriend and future wife of 65 years, Betty Milne, Walter discovered a magazine about the work of the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Inspired to devote his career to the study and practice of architecture, in 1947 he was accepted by Mr. Wright as an apprentice at the Taliesin Fellowship. Later Walter would serve as the senior apprentice and supervisor for the Wright-designed V.C. Morris building on Maiden Lane in San Francisco, the Walker residence in Carmel and the Buehler residence in Orinda. After leaving Taliesin, he was hired as the first employee of the architectural firm of Anshen and Allen. He later joined the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, where he spent the next 40 years of his career. His first few years at SOM were spent in Okinawa working on the reconstruction after World War II. Retiring from SOM in 1990, Walter continued to practice architecture. In 1994, he supervised the restoration of the Wright-designed Buehler home, which had been partially destroyed by fire, and had recently designed a home for a longtime client in Kenwood. Walter Olds was an avid hiker and with his wife, traveled extensively around the world, often with the Sierra Club. He is survived by his wife, Betty Olds, a Berkeley Council Member; sons, Lore and Colby (Deborah); daughter, Marcia, and four grandchildren, Mayacamas, Skyla, Olivia and Samuel. There will be a private family service. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to The Nature Conservancy, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203.

More ironic than Alanis Morrisette...

8.20.2007

I just finished reading The World According to Garp by John Irving. I initially resisted the book due to some early Wellesley bashing, but by the end, I really enjoyed it. For me, the book was about death and the irony and absurdity that often accompany it. Garp loved an ironic, unexpected, and ultimately karmic death.

As I sat in the corner of the café near my house frantically to finish some work on a death penalty appeal that I’m behind on, I had a vision of my own death. The tables and chairs are bulky and placed close together here. Between me and the door is a larger table. A woman with a huge stroller was trying to maneuver her way to the table and eventually had to park the stroller outside and bring only the bulky car seat with baby in to set next to me on the bench. The difficulty of logistics inherent in this small activity caught my attention and distracted me. Moments later, her friend arrived with another oversized stroller and they shuffled the large chairs to make room at the table to park the baby. Just settled in to drink lattes and discuss the latest triumphs of their precious little things, I had a vision of a fire in the café. I am stuck in the corner, trapped by the large machinery of birth, with all fire exits and paths to the door blocked by the oversized stroller. At the end, the babies take their collective revenge for my obstinate immunity to their charm. It would be a death that Garp would appreciate.

Of course, real death is neither ironic nor absurd. It is not romantic nor literary. It is sad. So so sad. Heartbreakingly so. It is painful and it hurts. Even if there is relief in some death, there is nothing redeeming or sensible about it. It just hurts.

chooks

we've got chooks.

they are very exciting. Chris built a chickencoop where the bottom rows of monkey island used to be and after nurturing the chicks through their early months, Linn brought them up to their new home.

There are four chooks and about ten names. Originally, Linn's seventh grade girls named them Grimia, Einstein, Dina maybe? and I forget. (no, i really do, that's not the name). Pomme thinks she should get to name them since Chris built the coop. So she has her own names for them all. Dad can't call anyone by their right name, and certainly not the chickens, so he's got Benjamin, Jessamia, and the little guy. Amy calls the aggressive piggy one Jezebel. I named the runt Pigeon (same word as Dove in Puerto Rico, and Paloma's most despised creatures) and then dad and I changed it to Pigelina (mixing in Pomme's middle name). We think we're funny. Paloma, oddly, hates it . The naming wars continue but I imagine it will settle out eventually. Or not. I guess Jesse's dog has at least5 different names: Sasha, Salsa, ratdog, X-dog, wiggles.


Anyway, Dad makes oatmeal each morning and takes it out to the coop. Like everyone up there, the chooks are very snobby about what they'll consume. Is that parslane organic? they wonder. I went out to observe the morning meal. Dad sat down on the ground in the breakfast nook, put Pigelina on one shoulder, Jezebel on the other, and fed them all breakfast. Benjamin is apparently the gross one. She seemed more interested in picking at dad's burn scabs on his arm than the oats. It was a funny scene. Dad looked like St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds. Probably more worthwhile than preaching to anyone else up there.

No pictures yet of the chooks, so i put up dad with the wall of roosters behind him.

in spite of my rage

I have an internal sense of justice based on the relative power dynamics of parties and whether we allow them access to the intentionally unavailable language and process of legal system. This sense of justice and fairness is at odds with how criminal justice is administered in US. It makes me think that playing a small part fighting against the overwhelming tsunami of the legal system is inadequate. How can you work within a system based on denying access to justice to those who need it the most?

Particularly now. Roberts, Alito and the rest eviscerating the delicate balance that made compliance in system possibly worthwhile. They don’t even apply to fundamental principles of our legal system – already stacked against the powerless and unwanted – evenhandedly. The arrogance of their easy execution of injustice inflames me. I understand what people mean when they say they see red and are consumed by rage. You feel it within your body.

Makes me want to stop. Alternately makes me want to withdraw into the easy distraction of daily life and pursue my own happiness; or give it all up and truly crusade for change through drastic measures. But the war rages in my head and never trickles down to my actions. In spite of my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.

What does it all mean? I feel eternally plagued by this question. I’ll be drawn into work or life and forget to obsess on the central existential questions, and then they come rushing back into focus, eclipsing the minutia of the mundane. But no answers, ever. Only the question and the possibilities of ignoring it for just a little while longer.

6.25.07 (happy birthday amy) upon reading of Supreme Court opinion in Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon.

Mee too!

I think I, like Donny B., have a man crush on Baron Davis.

Is that ok, Matt? (I'm a big fan of Matt Barnes too. He has such a great first name.)


GO WARRIORS!

Decades of History

Grandpa will be 89 on March 26. He was born in 1918. When I think about that, it is a little unfathomable. He has so many decades of memories. He lived through wars, depressions, over 20 Presidential terms, computerization of work, fast cars, nuclear escalation, and over 60 years of Grandma's cooking. He's hiked up Mt. Everest, traveled through Africa, the Middle East, South America, and who knows where else. When he was lying feebly in a hospital bed, only loosely aware of what was going on around him, it was hard to remember how experienced and competent he is at life.

I have spent a lot of time with Grandpa over this past week. He had a lot of time alone in a room to reflect on his life and talked about he kept going back to growing up on a farm in Iowa. It struck me how much our early childhood stays with us. It wasn't the time he spent in Japan as an architech, his wedding day, the birth of his children, the sights he had seen, or the work where he spent most of his adult life that he kept coming back to. He talked about his sister and milking cows. I feel like I have forgotten large chunks of my own childhood and I am 50 years closer in time to it that he is to his own. I wonder if the memories lost or repressed will return when I'm lying in a hospital bed in my days of twilight. So much of what we carry on our shoulders every day -- the stuff that makes us bend over decrepit, wince at the thought of getting up, avoid looking at our responsibilities directly -- isn't what sticks at the end. I guess that's somewhat comforting.

I watch Grandpa experiencing this reflection on his life. I see he has certain regrets and desires to make amends, tries to be less harsh and inpatient, and appreciate people who are important to him in a more expressive and verbal way. It makes me a little sad that I have not taken every opportunity to get to know him and hear more of his stories. He has almost 90 years worth of stories and I've barely scratched the surface. Most of our conversations over the years were light and trivial. I talk to him in short sentences, straining to be heard over his increasingly poor hearing. The speaking in short sentences made my topics more simple, my comments more simple, my questions more simple.

I need to remember how full his life and understanding is and take advantage of what opportunity to hear stories and tell him some of my own remain.

I love the little details of our lives that you forget about shortly after they happen. Or they are so insignificant that they don't seem repeating to other people but they make you smile: the image of Grandpa as a young man, milking the cows and squirting milk toward the transient barn cats that were sheepishly lurking around waiting for just such an occurence, and jumped at the milk before it could even touch the ground.

What It's All About

About a year ago, Chad sent an email out to a number of wine-drinking friends asking something about what wine meant to them or something to that effect. Lamely, I mulled over the question, intended to write a thoughtful response, and never got around to writing it out. Anyway, answering that questions is part of my impetus for writing here. Wine is important to me. It is deeply connected to where I come from and occupies much of my attention. (As Jesse remarked: What is the difference between drunks and alcoholics? We drunks don't have to go to stupid meetings all the time.)

Drinking wine is about community. Its about sitting around the table on the front porch with the people we love (and sometimes people we can barely tolerate - but that's more of a mai tai kind of night), eating a meal we made with our hands, drinking wine from grapes we harvested, and talking -- always talking, usually about everything and nothing, and everybody all at once. Wine evokes memory of people and moments, and it connects us to the same rituals of feasting, celebrating, and relating to our clan that our oldest ancestors engaged in.

That's part of why wine is important to my life. And the people that are around that table are what is even more important to my life. And it is stories about them that I want to write about here.

The first story

Regardless of where my life takes me, my heart remains safely nestled up in the hills on the property where I was born. Every year I return to pick grapes for my father. The vineyard is small and we recruit friends and family to pick on the weekends. The work is strenuous but there is something comforting and wholesome about being out in the early morning in the hills that look over the Napa Valley, trudging along the rows with your bucket, your knife and your back bent. Most mornings, the valley is an ocean under a blanket of fog with the opposing mountains emerging as islands in the distance. Hot air balloons rise above the fog and the harsh city noises carry up the canyon, muted through the moisture.

Picking is one of the most social events on the hill. People partner up and choose a row, moving from vine to vine, gossiping, laughing, and complaining. Above your own conversation you hear the murmuring and outbursts of your neighbors, culminating in shrieks as a grape fight erupts. Jesse, the neighbor and first cousin who my dad fires on a biweekly basis, is the bucket runner. Responding to bellows of “BUCKET!” he walks the rows to pick up buckets brimming with zinfandel, leaving behind a fresh bucket and his peanut gallery comments. Competing with the crows, my sister and I squawk our rendition of “Picking Cab Sucks” to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” Meanwhile, at break time, my artist-vintner-winemaker father, in Homer Simpson mode, slinks off to the truck in search of “doooouuughnuuts.”

There are rules to follow: First rule is Clean Clean Clean; second rule is Safety First; third Rule is Don’t Make Eye Contact; and the Fourth is Don’t Mention the Unmentionable. The first two are obvious; the latter refer to ex-wives and hostile neighbors. In direct violation of the Rule, the Unmentionable is the favorite topic of discussion.

Picking is the soul of our winemaking. The people, the laughter, the bitterness, and the love that gets crushed into the fermenter along with the grapes is raw and real. They are the needle and threads of the tapestry that the vineyard weaves into my life.

originally written in 2002