Homage to Blue Elves

The funny thing about the blue elf aloe is that it is neither blue (or even a little bit depressed) nor an elf. However, it is an aloe.

The blue elf is a cultivar of the aloe genus which originated in the Old World, Africa and the Near East in particular. Aloes have been grown in the New World for centuries, long enough for one of the five hundred or so aloe species to be named "Mexican" and for the Mexicans to cook the leaves.

No one seems to know who developed the blue elf or how the cultivar got named. They are not blue. If happy (a little shade is always welcome) they are quite green. If over exposed to sunlight or cold, they turn dark, not blue.

They are early bloomers, starting to grow their long stalks and coral colored blooms in winter, even before the aloe vera (the "true aloe") take off. When the regular aloe bloom, it's all at once as if they all had a meeting and unanimously decided upon the opening day. The blue elves tend to be more independent, different plants blooming over weeks and months.

We inherited a couple of clumps of blue elves when we bought the house. I thinned the clumps and planted a few around the gully. I noticed hummingbirds feeding off of the trumpet shaped blue elf flowers. I thinned and planted more clumps.

This winter has been a bumper crop of flowers and the hummingbirds are happy. See for yourself.

Dancing Light

Sitting outside on a February evening, appreciating the warm light of the setting sun, Shari takes a video shot. On playback, a light can be seen, sometimes a single spot of green, sometimes splitting into several spots all clustered together, an aura around them.

The camera is pointed to the sunset, and the light disappears as the camera moves away from the sunset, but the light does not move with the camera. It seems to have a life of its own.

Taking Pictures

George Kotolaris (1929-1990)

Editing pictures and video is a hobby, but pointing a camera at people can be a bit awkward — for me and for the subjects.  People may like the edited programs years later, but at the time, they tend to groan and joke so I feel a bit self-conscious.

Recently I have been thinking of George Kotolaris, Seattle’s iconic, garishly dressed, and somewhat unhinged but harmless eccentric and gate-crasher. He too had a hobby of taking pictures of people. That was back in the days of film cameras. I doubt if his Kodak Brownie had film in it, but he pointed his Brownie often, asking people to pose, often with his mother, Pansy.

I would regularly see George and Pansy at St. Mark’s, the Episcopalian cathedral on Capitol Hill. Each Sunday from late 1970 to about 1973, I used to chauffeur Joshua Green to St. Mark's for church.

Joshua Green was another Seattle institution. He and his family owned Peoples National Bank, the third largest bank in Washington at the time, before it was gobbled up by US Bank. He came to Seattle from Mississippi when he was seventeen. That was in 1886.

Joshua Green (1869-1975) and his wife, "Missy".
Both lived over a hundred years.

He made his fortune in the shipping business running a mosquito fleet during the Klondike gold rush 1896-1899. As roads and automobiles proliferated in Puget Sound, he saw the handwriting on the wall and in 1927, he got out of the maritime shipping business to devote himself to banking. His shipping company became the nucleus for the then newly formed Washington State Ferry System. He was a multi-millionaire back in the days before wealth got concentrated in billionaires. In 1968, Governor Dan Evans named him Washington Man of the Century.

My brother got the job of Joshua Green's weekend chauffeur and passed it on to me in late 1970 after I got out of high school. I was seventeen. Joshua Green was a hundred and one.

I would help Mr. Green out of the car and up the cathedral stairs, then wait in the car until I saw him come out at the end of whatever Episcopalians do for Sunday service. George and Pansy were often with the congregation coming out of the church, George trying to take pictures of the old man as I would be trying to get him back down the stairs and settled in the front seat of the car. So George was a bit of a nuisance.

Which is a bit how I feel pointing cameras at people — a bit of a nuisance.

Every Sunday as we drove away from St. Mark's Cathedral, and I do mean every time, the old man would remark, “I don’t know why I go there, but I feel better afterwards.”

Outdoor TV

Evenings are warm, the garden is pleasant, and we can pick up our Wi-Fi signal in the garden. For years I have been wondering about watching video outdoors -- like the drive-in movies of long ago.

We finally did it. In these times of social distancing, we can invite a couple over and entertain outdoors and watch the telly, all the while keeping a discrete distance.

Wombats, Giraffes & Referees

Anyone watching the football playoffs?

My favorites, the Upper Slobbovian Wombats, are playing the Middle Willingtonian Giraffes.

The Referees are favored. The Referees haven't lost a ball game since the Mayan collapse when Chief Qetzal had Referee Coatl disemboweled for a bad call.

Rhys ap Thomas, the Tudors, and Connections

Pembroke Castle where Henry Tudor was born.

Whoever ill-affected to the state, shall dare to land in those parts of Wales where I have any employment under your majesty, must resolve with himself to make his entrance and irruption over my belly.

In a nutshell, Rhys ap Thomas promised Richard III that if anyone landed in Wales to attack him, it would have to be over his body. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) were still going on. The Welsh nobleman Rhys had confirmed his support for King Richard and, in exchange, he was rewarded with money and the job of defending SW Wales.

Henry Tudor was Richard's rival and enemy. He had fled to France, secured help from the French king, and returned as an invader with a small force of French and Scottish soldiers. They landed in Southwest Wales at Mill Bay, Pembrokeshire.

Mullock Bridge in the countryside of
southwest Wales near Pembroke and the bay where
Henry Tudor's invasion force landed from France.

It was Rhys' job to attack the invaders, but he changed sides and joined Henry instead.

Promises were rather serious matters back in those days, as was the fear of eternal damnation for breaking them. As one story goes, a clever priest offered a solution which Rhys adopted. He stood or sat under a bridge near Mill Bay, Mullock Bridge, as Henry Tudor (likely, his advance guard) rode over the bridge. His promise was fullfilled to the letter, if not the principle.

Rhys, then others, joined Henry and defeated Richard's army at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). Richard was killed - the last English monarch to die in battle. Some thirty years of dynastic warfare were decisively ended. Henry become Henry VII, the first Tudor king and the father of the better known Henry VIII and the grandfather of Elizabeth I.

The tomb of Siir Rhys ap Thomas in St. Peter's Church,
Carmanthen. Henry VII knighted and
rewarded Rhys with Carew Castle, and Rhys is
a bit of a hero in these parts.

Had Rhys not switched sides, Shakespeare would not have written Richard the Third, glorifying the Tudors for the sake of Elizabeth I and demeaning Richard. "A horse. A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" The English Reformation may never have happened, and a Catholic regime may have surpressed the remarkable creativity that we know today as the Elizabethan period.

Here's the interesting rub. Rhys is credited, according to the eyewitness who wrote a poem about the feat, of being the man who killed Richard III on the battlefield of Bosworth.

The name Rhys and its variants Rees, Reese, Ris, Rice, and Reece are common enough in Wales that there is no assurance Rhys ap ("son of") Thomas is Shari's blood ancestor. Shari's mother's maiden name is Rees and her ancestors came from Felindre in Wales, north of Carmarthen. But certainly, there is no harm in pondering and basking in the possibility.

The Boo Laundrette.

It's been a week, our laundry bag was getting heavy, and we do like to wear our favorite clothes. Monday became laundry day and our laundromat of choice was the Boo Laundrette in downtown Cirencester.

Of course, being an oversized village and medieval wool town, negotiating the warren of narrow streets in the old city was no small feat. But we had scoped out the parking lot, the route, and the location of the Boo well in advance. We even had set aside some one pound coins for the Brewery Car Park. We assumed the Laundrette would give change. It opened at eight.

We were there at eight. The door was locked and no one inside. We rang the bell. Nothing. We begin to get a little desperate. Then Shari noticed the only intelligible instruction in that laundromat, which was to press the button and open the door simultaneously. It worked.

Inside was nice and clean and lonely. But no change machine. There were no instructions posted on the wall as to how much it cost for a load in the washers. We had about £2 in coins. We put a coin in and the washer's screen lit up and asked for another £6 some. We had no such amount in coins.

It was still early, but the butcher shop a block and a half away was opening. I asked the woman, "Could I trouble you for some change? Pound coins? My wife and I are trying to do laundry and the laundromat has no coin changer."

She smiled. "Say no more." and she gave me £5 in pound coins.

Elated with my success, and impressed with yet another example of British kindness, I returned to reassure Shari that all was well. We got the wash going.

While the wash was washing, we had time to decipher the dryer instructions. Here was the clue. A typed and overwritten piece of paper pinned above the dryers which read: "£2 = £1 coins only". The £1 had been handwritten on a tiny piece of paper and sticky-taped over something else.

After about five minutes of pondering alternative interpretations, we reckoned that neither our £2 coins nor our 50p coins would work. The sign meant £2 to get the machine to work and the machine took only £1 coins.

We needed to exchange our coins for £1 coins.

I hesitated to go back to the butcher again. So instead of going out, then left, I walked out, then right. The One Pound store was open. Kinda like our Dollar stores. The doors were open, lights were on, and two young school boys dressed in uniforms were cruising an aisle.

"Can I trouble you for some one pound coins?" I asked in the most calm and polite voice I could master. The lady smiled and asked me how many. I asked for ten £1 coins in exchange for my ten pounds worth of £2 and 50p coins. She pulled out a handful of £1 coins and counted them out.

I returned victorious to Shari who was anxiously waiting. The One Pound store. Of course.

While we are watching the clothes go round, a woman came in dressed as you would expect for an early, chilly, overcast morning that threatened rain. We exchanged polite and warm greetings, she deposited her load of wet clothes into a dryer, and left.

Now comes the good part. A few minutes later, another woman walked in. She was a rather striking woman. She wore a short red dress and high heels suitable for an evening cocktail party. She made no attempt at eye contact or any greeting, but walked right up to the dryer with her Ikea blue bag with wet clothes and shoved them in the dryer. I was sitting next to that machine and, being polite, stared at the ground, unavoidably looking at her naked legs and painted toenails in her high heeled sandals.

Like the first woman, she left. Obviously both women knew the system and how many minutes of dryer time £2 bought.

Now comes a better part. After a few minutes, the dryer used by the woman in the red dress made some god-awful bashing noise. I looked at the dryer and saw a woman's belt tumbling around and around. A belt buckle. Okay.

Now comes the best part. About another five minutes later, I saw some white, rectangular shape tumbling around and around in the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. I thought that was a little odd, but I am polite and did not stare at someone else's laundry in the dryer. But I couldn't help noticing that it was a piece of paper. Okay. She hadn't checked and emptied pockets.

Here's the punchline. As the minutes passed, more and more sheets of paper appeared through the glass door of the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. Soon there were twenty, thirty, and who knows how many more. Now I got curious, stared through the glass, and started reading the printed text on the pages. They were the pages of a book. I read page three hundred and something on one sheet. They were all neatly separated and so many of them were tumbling around and around that the clothes of the woman in the red dress were no longer visible.

Of course, I pulled out my video camera and took some shots of the pages going around and around in the dryer.

Our loads were done, folded, and stacked in our laundry bag so we left. But both Shari and I would have loved to have seen the expression on the face of that woman in the red dress when she came to retrieve her load and opened the dryer door.

Traveling Confusion II

The good news is that it worked out well and easily, but for an hour or two, I had my doubts.

There comes a time with each rental car when it's necessary to find the fuel tank cap (which side? how to open?) and figure out whether the gas station pumps are self-serve, prepay, or take credit cards. After a bit of motorway driving and route finding from York to Penrith, I couldn't even find the gas station in the freeway rest area without making a wrong turn. A U-turn around the restaurant and general rest area parking lot, silently muttering "left side, left side", and down the other side, and there's the BP sign.

I had to ask the woman at the gas station shop counter how to pay. Refreshingly simple. Pump, then come inside to pay.

I went back outside and, of the three available nozzles at the island where I stopped, I chose the green one. The other two were black and grey.

Now in the US, we have various grades of gasoline nozzles and the one green nozzle for diesel. I simply chose the green nozzle and started pumping. As the fuel poured in the tank, I saw the black and grey nozzles were labeled diesel and diesel something. I checked the label on the nozzle I was pumping. Unleaded.

I stopped pumping. Our rental is diesel. Not knowing anything specific about the risks, other than it's not really a good thing, I completed the top up with diesel.

Fortunately, we pulled into the gas station primarily for WC purposes. We had almost a half tank when we pulled in.

Fortunately, gas is lighter than diesel, so when I drove another hundred miles to get to our room in Roslin, we were still running on diesel. Dumb luck.

We settled in, had lunch, toured the chapel, returned to our room, and I remembered that it might be a good idea to search the internet and learn a little about mixing the fuels.

It's actually a very, very bad thing to do. And since I couldn't blame anyone but my own stupidity, our comprehensive insurance might not pay for, say, replacing the engine.

We searched the internet for nearby mechanics. It was Saturday night. Everything is closed until Monday morning. We thought we'd risk driving another ten miles Sunday morning to get to our pre-booked Edinburgh guest house and then hope for the best.

Shari to the rescue. Call the rental car number. Use the £10 burner phone we got in Windsor.

The other thing about pouring gasoline in a diesel car is that it's a pretty common occurence. Within 45 minutes, the AA Fuel Assist van showed up. Another 35 minutes, the very nice young Scottish man (he'd been to Las Vegas) had drained our full but contaminated tank and carburetor and put in £10 worth of diesel to get us to the next gas station.

Our comprehensive insurance pays for it.

Datchet

Datchet from our hotel room.
The tower of St. Mary the Virgin is visible
behind the Royal Stag.

Datchet is a village on the Thames a mile and a half from Windsor. Stuff around the Thames is old. The river is life, a barrier, and a highway.

Datchet has its roots in Celtic times, if not earlier. It used to have a ferry to take kings and travelers on the road from London (north side) to Windsor Castle (south side). If they weren't taking a boat or the train.

Queen Victoria protecting Windsor Castle
from tourist busses.

Datchet is the location of the hotel we booked online for our first two nights in Britain so we could visit Windsor. It's the Manor Hotel. The desk clerk told us it is three hundred years old. Maybe people were smaller back then because our corner room was small. Like the vaudeville joke, the room was so small even the rats were hunchbacked.

It rained last night. Shari woke me up when she gasped, then cursed. Drops on her face. We had left the windows open. But the drops came from the ceiling onto the bedstand next to her and splashed on her face.

The night clerk feined surprise and explained that they had had no rain for a while. That did not explain the mold on the ceiling, or the pretty stainless steel jug standing on the floor in a doorway where we went for breakfast. That is in the middle of the hotel building. The roof is two levels up. The jug was catching about half of the drips from the ceiling.

Three hundred years old, you say? i believe it.

We got a new room this morning. Much bigger. This hotel advertises its facilities for weddings. I think we got the wedding room. It's not really a suite, but it's almost three times bigger than our first room. Which says much more about the first room than the second.

We still have our view of the little village center with its church steeple peering out above a giant tree by its entrance. The church is surrounded on all three sides by weathered gravestones. No landscaping. Just graves that, far as I can tell, go back to the early 1800's.

After our visit to Windsor Castle, I had to visit that church. It is named St. Mary the Virgin. It is a charming place, not just because of its age and Gothic style, but its human scale (compared to Windsor Castle), and the obvious fact that it is very much a working church. Folding chairs set up for meetings and prayer groups. Collection plate still had coins in it, out in the open. Bulletin boards, children's drawings. A box with donated reading glasses. Beautiful stained glass windows from the early 1800's. And a plaque with names and dates of its early rectors and vicars. Earliest date? 1239.

If a graveyard surrounds three sides, what is on the fourth? The Royal Stag. look it up on the web. The pub dates back to the 15th Century when it was an ale house. We headed there for dinner. I had its signature dish: beef and ale pie on mashed potatoes. Great. The carrot coriander soup was excellent, as were Shari's ribs.

And the pub itself? Imagine a community living room.

Fighting, Fighting

I have only fifteen pages left to translate out of five hundred fifty-five. I am towards the end (obviously) of the final, all-out Turkish assault on Eger Castle, October 14, 1552. That's about the fourth major assault over the thirty-nine day siege by some 40,000 Ottomans. The castle defenders number about 2,000. Or at least they did when the siege started.

The Women of Eger,
painting by Bertalan Székely

There is a great deal of mayhem in this Hungarian historical novel published in 1899, Egri Csillagok (Eger Stars). Most recently during this final assault — as I described to Shari yesterday afternoon, then again to Ray and Judy before going out for dinner — a widowed mother, Lady Balogh, her young son having just been killed in the fighting, grabs a sword and runs to the bastion. Meanwhile, the captain of the castle, István Dobó, wrestles with a giant Turk who falls off the platform by the bastion onto the cobblestones below. The Turk loses his helmet and gets up just as Lady Balogh is running by. Enraged, she swings her sword and, as the novelist, Géza Gárdonyi, writes, severs the Turk's head from his neck.

The siege takes up only the last half of the novel. The first half begins with two children skinny dipping, five-year old Éva and seven-year old Gergely. They are captured by a one-eyed janissary named Yumurdjak. What follow in that first half of the novel are descriptions of life in 16th Century Hungary and Constantinople. The last pages will surely complete the story of Yumurdjak. Éva and Gergely, now grown up and married, through a highly unlikely set of circumstances only a novelist can weave, are both fighting on the ramparts against the Turks, the husband not knowing his wife is there. It's a page-turner.

It is a historical novel. The siege of Eger really happened. Only two years later, Sebestyén Tinódi was composing ballads chronicling the heroism of the Eger defenders. The characters the novelist develops in the first half of the book actually existed and fought at Eger. Their names and deeds are known and were recorded, not just by Tinódi, but also in records kept during the siege by the aged castle steward, János Sukán. We know the names and deeds of soldiers and officers, blacksmiths, millers, the two priests, and the mayor of Eger, the inventory of supplies the castle steward maintained, and that the castle had thirteen barbers. Back in those days, the novelist explains, there were no doctors. Barbers washed, sewed and bandaged wounds. Someone counted 12,000 cannonballs inside the fortress, not including those embedded in the walls or those the defenders hurled down on Turks climbing siege ladders.

Granted, the first half is more novel than history, but even so the historical setting is accurate. The brutal suppression of the peasant revolt led by György Dózsa, the catastrophic Battle of Mohacs, and the Ottoman ruse to occupy Buda are all facts. And in the hands of a skilled novelist, which Gárdonyi certainly was, this brutal history is strikingly vivid.

The Siege of Eger Castle
painting by Béla Vízkelety

There is a great deal of mayhem. Gárdonyi is constantly weaving in colorful details that bring the medieval period alive, together with humor — sometimes black, sometimes almost slapstick, particularly his use of a gypsy character, Sárközi, for comic relief. But there is a great deal of mayhem.

And it's that mayhem that makes me reflect and write this blog post. It's the realization that we haven't changed all that much over the last six centuries.

I'm flipping through Netflx documentaries and see Rick Steves in Europe. I flip through his episodes, passing over four or five travel shows set in Germany, and stumble upon Bulgaria. ¿Bulgaria? It's one of those Balkan places loaded with centuries of animosity and bloodshed. Being raised Hungarian, I have such associations. I'm curious. The half hour program is delightful. You know, there is a lot of beauty and culture in Bulgaria.

So, someone remind me. Why do we hate and slaughter each other?

Restored Zobor Vineyards - Great Grandfather and the Phylloxera Plague

Me, dad and Uncle Zoltán at the Paulik family
graves in Nitra. Photo taken in 1979.

My great grandparents on my father's side lived in the north of thousand-year-old Hungary, what is now Slovakia. Andor Paulik was my dad's grandfather. (My dad and his brother Zoltán "Hungarianized" the family name to Palotás in 1933.) My dad fled Hungary after the war (the second one) and Uncle Zoltán stayed behind.

My uncle liked ferreting out family records. Among my father's papers is a copy of a Slovak newspaper article from May of 1978. It is about Andor Paulik. My uncle was the source for the article. I know Uncle Zoltán wanted to preserve a bit of history in Upper Hungary (Felvidék or "Upper Region" in Hungarian), so he submitted the information to the newspaper.

As the concluding paragraph indicates, Zoltán also wanted to help preserve the Paulik family grave site where Andor Paulik (1840-1927), his wife Anna Pruzsinszky (1836-1910), and three of their children, Andor (1876-1880), Philmen (1873-1886), and Gyula (1869-1887) were buried.

Here is my translation of the Slovak newspaper article.

RESTORED ZOBOR VINEYARDS

In the second half of the last century, the most dangerous vineyard blight came to us from North America — Phylloxera aphid, which destroyed vineyards not only at home [in Slovakia] but throughout Europe. The city of Nitra was surprised to learn from a circular from the Ministry of Economy that Phylloxera infestation was found in nearby Klosterneuburg in Austria. The circular reached the city hall in Nitra on 21 October 1874. Despite great efforts, within a few years the surrounding vineyards were devastated.

It was a terrible blow for Nitra. Mountain villages Horno-i Dolnozoborska sought help from the Vineyards Commission to attack the problem, but they were helpless. Members of the Commission — K. Riszer, A. Misz, K. Mayer and St. Čačka — recommended the chairman of the Commission, István Bangha, to act for the good.

Some vineyards were neglected and abandoned, while others contemplated the destruction of their own vines in an effort to halt the spread of the infestation. Only a few decided to revive their vineyards by uprooting the vines that had been attacked and replacing them with more vigorous root stocks from America.

Most credit for restoring the vineyards belongs to Andrew Paulik, who in 1882 restored the episcopal vineyards with varieties of Klevner, Vlašsky riesling and Burgundy grapes on American roots. Assistance also came from America in 1886 in the forms of consultant František Szecsi, who had developed excellent table grape varieties, and Sadecky, who had developed new resistant varieties of root stocks that had been launched into mass production in America.

The forestry engineer Andrew Paulik was born the son of a miller in the bishopric county of Nitra on November 29, 1840, in Podvazi, Povazska Bystrica. After completing middle school in Czech Tešíně, he attended the forestry technical school in Sovinci, Bruntal district, and interned at the Bytča estates. After graduating from the forestry school in 1860, he helped to map and measure the Strečnanske estates, then to survey the estates of Likavske Castle, first as an assistant engineer, then as an independent engineer. For nearly 10 years, he managed the forests of Drietom, and then he moved to Nitra where he worked as a forest engineer at the Nitra bishopric until he retired on April 1, 1911. In Nitra, he lived in the first floor of the house at no. 16 Hraclnova Street, but it was mostly a winter house in the courtyard terrace, accessible only from Vazilova Street. Summers he spent in his vineyard in Martinská [Marton] valley. Of his four sons, only one lived to manhood. Two died prematurely and the third was accidently killed at age 18 in a hunting accident near Radošina. Today his grandson, Zoltán Palotás, lives in Budapest.

Andrew Paulik was not only a forestry engineer, but also an excellent grower of fruit trees and wine grapes. He died in Nitra and is buried in a family tomb near the northern wall, not far from the corner of the cemetery.

All who today manage vineyards or appreciate the harvest and the soul of a good Zobor wine should remember the debt we owe to Andrew Paulik. After his death in 1927, his friends and relatives wanted to appreciate his good work by locating [his vineyard] in Martinská Valley, but this plan was ruined by the economic crisis [of the Great Depression]. Today, hardly anybody remembers A. Paulik, so it is important to keep his memory at least in the place of his subdued rest.

It Takes a Village . . .

. . . of Hardware and Software to make a home movie.

Scenes from a movie about Thomas Edison (Edison, the Man, 1940) come to mind. Spencer Tracy, playing the role, keeps trying different materials to serve as the filament for his electric light bulb. After numerous failed attempts, he hits upon carbon and the commercially viable electric light bulb is patented.

Home video editing is like that, only without the commercial viability or the patent.

Depending upon the medium — a computer file resident on a hard drive, a Blu-ray disk, or a regular or high definition DVD disk  — it takes experimenting with different combinations of hardware, software, and techniques to produce a viable product.

I think video editing is a wonderful expression of creativity. But then, it is my hobby. I would not want to discourage anyone from the hobby. Editing home videos is a form of storing and sharing memories and, hey, who isn't into a bit of self-indulgence? But in my experience, it is also a frustrating process of trial and error. I suppose that also is a form of creativity. Like Edison and his filaments, I was forced to think up different trials of computers, programs, and settings to hit upon a satisfactory result.

I began editing video in the late 20th Century using multiple video-tape recorders and a switch box. It's a process called linear editing and it is not only frustrating, it's not very rewarding because with each copy, the picture quality gets worse. With the advent of affordable, consumer non-linear editing, I took the plunge. I am on my fourth system and, as it turns out, in order to share videos taken in Europe this September, I need each of the previous three.

A Simple Video File that Plays on Television

For our own use, I store video files on an external hard drive that hooks up to a new Roku box via a USB cable. My tiny four terabyte drive is only half full and replaces some fifty DVD boxes. But I did have to buy the new Roku box, and it took several tries with different file formats on my iMac before I discovered the one that the Roku could read. It's got to be in H264. The lesson here is that if you are using a Mac, you live in a small world.

Then the problem was jerky playback. What looked perfectly fine on the Mac was intolerably jerky on anything else. I won't go through the details, in large part because there were so many frustrations that I have shoved the memories into oblivion. All I remember is what worked.

First, edit the raw clips in Final Cut X in their native format. In my case, I am using a high definition, 1920x1080 pixel video camera that shoots 60 frames per second. I am rounding up. Owing to accidents of cathode ray televisions, it's actually 59.94 fps, which is double the standard NTSC 29.97 fps. Web search "frames per second" and your head will spin looking for rhyme or reason. There are more settings than you can imagine in a nightmare. At any rate, FC-X and its extra-price "Compressor" software which is supposedly "professional" and gives the user even more control over output (it doesn't) is incapable of producing a movie file that does not jerk on my television.

Second, copy the edited file into MyDVD (a hybrid Roxio-Apple program) and have it rendered into a high definition DVD. Why MyDVD? Because Toast Titanium, the much touted standard for playing, copying and authoring CD, DVD and now Blu-rays on Macs, particularly important because Steve Jobs and Apple refused to support Blu-ray (it had to do with patent royalties), does not work. Another lesson: do not use Toast Titanium for anything other than copying.

Third, strip the actual movie file from the DVD image (an "ISO" folder), now in television-legible 29.97 fps, and import it back into FC-X.

Fourth, render the imported DVD file from the ISO folder because without the DVD envelope, no Roku box or pretty much anything else will read it. By stroke of good fortune, FC-X does. It takes several agonizing minutes to import, then more time to export (the term used now is "share") the .mov file (in H264, naturally).

Oh, I forgot something. While Toast would not work at all, MyDVD has the curious habit of shifting the sound track almost two seconds ahead of the video. Like, you hear the words from my mouth one second, then my mouth moves the next. Unacceptable. The fix? Start each edit with two seconds of test frames and loud noise, then two seconds of blank video and audio. When the file is imported back into FC-X for the final rendering, detach the audio and, using the test frames, noise, and blank, shift the audio track into place.

The end product is high definition video on my television. It's quite satisfying to watch.

A High Definition Silver Platter

Shari wants to send copies to her Mum. Of course, I am flattered with any audience. Shari's Mum doesn't have a new Roku box with a USB port, but she does have a Blu-ray player. I am scared because I know the frustrations of authoring and burning silver platters are even greater than just producing a viable video file. Plus, it takes several hours for the computer to render and burn a disk, so the frustration of each trial and error is magnified.

Apple, courtesy of Steve Jobs, does not support Blu-ray. Which is why I have MyDVD and Toast. Both have facilities for authoring Blu-ray and high definition DVD (called "AVCHD" DVD) discs. Like a gullible fool, I fiddled around setting up menus and chapter markers for scenes on each program. The time was wasted. Toast would hum along for several hours then, when its little ticker-tape reader stated it was 99% done, it froze and delivered the always assuring dialogue box that reads something like "unknown error 3640137. Toast must shut down." MyDVD would hum along for several hours and produce a wonderful disc — with the audio track almost two seconds off-kilter. Unacceptable.

I thought of using my Windows laptop. There are two "big" video editing programs for consumers: Final Cut on Macs and Premiere on Windows. I also have Premiere. I had purchased it before my iMac and FC-X, only to be frustrated trying to use Premiere. So I switched back to Macs. Now came the time for Premiere and Windows glory. I copied the end product files from my iMac onto a thumb drive and loaded them onto my laptop and into Premiere. I even figured out menus and chapter markers for scenes. First I produced high definition DVD's, the AVCHD variety. Lo and behold, success!

Blank DVD's are much cheaper than blank Blu-rays. Trouble is, a DVD is good for 4.7 gigabytes compared to 23 gigabytes for a Blu-ray. My product took six DVD's, about twenty-five minutes of video each. I progressed to Blu-ray. I burned two separate Blu-rays and got perfect results, except for the photo of Shari I used for one of the menus. No worries. I had finally figured out how to produce a Blu-ray.

A Regular Definition Silver Platter

Shari wants to send copies to her Aunt. Of course, I am flattered with any audience. Shari's Aunt has only a regular television and a regular DVD player. That adds another complexity: reducing wide screen, high definition, 16:9 aspect video to the old standard resolution, 4:3 aspect video.

I tried the iMac. FC-X hummed along for several hours and produced a disk with chopped off menus and images. It's what low resolution TV broadcasters do to wide screen movies: mutilate them. MyDVD hummed along for several hours and produced a good looking disk with the audio track almost two seconds off kilter. Unacceptable. Toast hummed along for several hours and choked. It delivered an assuring dialogue box stating that the last instruction failed because it had to open too many files. Say what? It had successfully processed, interpreted, de-shrunk, sampled, re-shrunk and multiplexed some three hours of video, that's over 22 billion pixels plus audio, and it got hung up opening thirty files? Premiere hummed along for several hours then choked. It just froze. After aborting a couple of times, I thought to myself, "Maybe it needs a lot of time."  I left it on overnight. It was at 23% when I went to bed. It was at 23% when I woke up.

Shari suggested taking my files to a commercial place to have it authored and burned onto DVD. My ego took that as a personal affront. She intended only to help, but I would not give in.

After some hours, I thought to myself, "What about the old Mac?" I bought the Mac G-5 in 2006 because the custom built PC that I had bought specifically for video editing a couple of years earlier was incapable of burning a DVD without skips. Its connection between computer and burner was too slow. The G-5, like its Windows-based predecessor, is a desktop. Does anyone remember desktop computers? They are the ones so big and so heavy that you had to put them on the floor. They came with cathode ray monitors.

The G-5 version of Final Cut had never failed me editing. Its version of MyDVD worked seamlessly because, back a decade ago, Apple actually supported and integrated the then current video technology.

I experimented. I converted one of my end-product files to the DV format. Thank goodness, Final Cut on the G-5 read the files. I loaded all the files on the G-5 and Final Cut. The old ways came back, like riding a bicycle. I quickly loaded a timeline with about half the files, inserted chapter markers, rendered it, imported it into MyDVD, then designed menus. The G-5 hummed along for three hours and produced a DVD that worked perfectly.

Thomas Edison would be proud.

Weddings, Ties and Smiles

I don't get many opportunities to put on a necktie, and I believe the last time I wore this black sport jacket was at another wedding, that of Stephen and Laura.  It, too, was outdoors, as was the wedding celebration of Raphael and Woan Ching.

By contrast, the wedding of Madhu and Rie was indoors, although we did light a fire as part of the ceremony. It burned not in the fireplace, but in a temporary brick pit in the middle of the living room carpet. It's a bit of a story, and I digress.

What do these weddings have in common? Shari and I helped officiate. That's an honor and a delight for us.

Mind you, with Raph and Woan Ching, it was unofficial. I do not know if the authority conferred upon Shari and me by the International Assembly of Spiritual Healers and Earth Stewards Convocation of Ministers extends to Arizona. Fortunately, Raph and Woan Ching got married by a judge a year earlier. But this was the big celebration and they went all out. They needed someone with gravitas to play the role of officiant, and if there is something I regret about the past, it's not turning out for drama in high school.

Good thing I printed the script in large font because for the first half of the performance, I forgot to put on my reading glasses. The crowd made me nervous. I couldn't figure out why the letters were a bit fuzzy. But read the script I did, managing to look up occasionally, although I mangled some Chinese names and certainly mangled the Mandarin blessing at the end. "Bai neean how hö … jung gyie tong shīn" is how I wrote it down in my own mix of Spanish and Hungarian phonetics.

Fortunately, family and friends enjoyed the show. Most importantly, bride and groom were happy, which makes Shari and me ecstatic. Thanks to everyone who made it possible, and as we say in Mandarin (Woan Ching's translation),

Be in love and devote yourselves to each other.

Good advice for everyone, married, committed, single or not.

Gadgets

How many ways can we surf the net? Let me count.

We just bought two Droids, one for Shari and another for me, so that's two.

We each have our front line laptops, Shari's MacBook and Tom's new HP, so that makes four.

Then we have three tablets: two that we use each morning to wake up and play solitaire, and to keep us occupied while we have the telly on in the evening. Plus there's the virtually free Verizon tablet that we got with our new Droids. It was a package deal we could not refuse. So that makes seven.

Then I have a bad habit of hanging onto laptops that still serve a function. My old Toshiba that runs Windows 2000 (I bought it at Costco with Windows 97) and operates the old scanner that scans slides.

Does anyone remember slides? You know, film that used to thread through a camera that when processed was a positive, as opposed to a negative. The images on the roll were individually cut and framed in cardboard or, if the film processor was upscale, in plastic. Never mind. the nice young man who sold us the Droids had no idea what I was talking about either.

That's eight, although since Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 2000, I don't use it to access the web. It was also my computer of choice to create websites, but Microsoft decided not to support its own Expressions, the web design program I use. But it is a working laptop, so it counts as number eight.

Then there is my full sized Mac G something or another. It's so big it sits on the floor. It's so old it's pre-Intel processors. Just try to find anything that runs on a pre-Intel Mac. I bought this machine over a decade ago when I was editing video and burning DVD's from our 2004 tour in Eastern Turkey. The behemoth still edits video nicely, and I have no great desire to buy a current version of Final Cut. (I have Express. Apple long since has
pulled the plug on that application.) Anyway, the behemoth makes nine.

And of course, counting as we do in a decimal system, there has to be a tenth. That's the MacBook I just retired. A few years old, it fried itself because -- gasp -- I would leave it plugged in. The battery overheated, expanded, and rendered the "Superdrive" inoperable pretty much within the first year, then proceeded to damage the touchpad, hard drive and motherboard. It didn't work. So in a fit of unbridled loyalty to Apple, and considering the outrageous prices Apple charges for its products, I got it fixed. All the parts I have identified had to be replaced. Machine worked okay. Then I made the mistake of upgrading to OS El Capitan. Ask me about Apple. Go ahead, ask me.

So my MacBook is retired and I'm trying to figure out whether I can make it work running music on my stereo system.

Anyone remember stereo systems? You know, receiver, amplifier, CD player, turntable, and big speakers, all connected with stereo cables? No, I didn't think so. But I still have stuff connected to my thirty year old Bose speakers.

Now my music system originates in an iPod Touch that Apple and time have passed by. That is, it can't take the current iOS or whatever operating system runs the little beast. That means current "apps" (short for applications) can't run on my iPod Touch. Apple is the leading technology business when it comes to planned obsolescence.  They are masters at it. But the iPod Touch, only about six years old, does connect to the internet. That's eleven.

I won't count another four iPods rarely used, two of which no longer work. So the number is at eleven. If you know a little about numerology, eleven is a master number. Trouble is, when it comes to all these devices, I feel more like a slave.

Oh, there's a twelfth device. Surely twelve is the number of completion. The Sumerians thoughts so. The twelfth gadget is my work laptop, the one I use to earn money so I can afford the other eleven.

My favorite new gadget? A hand-crank ice crusher. To make a good martini, the ice should be crushed.

Easter 2016

Dave Kenison's cartoon, 1973

Easter Sunday has many memories for me.  From a Catholic childhood, it's an inherently sweet holiday. It comes after forty days of purple covered artwork in churches, feigned sadness, and the guilt-ridden pretense of giving up something for Lent, all of which culminates in scoldings on Good Friday should I smile or hum a tune. So the Easter egg hunt on Sunday was a welcome relief.

Randy Wollenmann's creation, 2016

Easter isn't as big a deal as Christmas, but it's more significant than other annual events, whether Memorial Day or the opening day of boating season. It's somewhere with Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, neither of which were celebrated in Australia when I was growing up.

Easter means Spring. It's a Spring festival. That by itself brings up sweet memories of waking up one Easter Sunday at the University District house in Seattle to one of those rare sunny days in Lower Alaska with a gloriously blue sky. Outside my window, the huge cherry tree was in full bloom. It was stupendous.

This Easter Sunday created some new memories and some new associations.

My Easters will forever be enriched knowing that in Martha's family, they have been cooking rabbits on each Easter Sunday for decades. Martha's daughter, Jamie, did us the honors by barbecuing this iconic symbol of Spring.

I don't know why we are squeamish about the idea of eating rabbits. Lord knows, they are pesky varmints in any garden. We eat cows, pigs, lamb, fish, and chicken. What's the deal with bunny wabbits?

I admit that I made a note of the butcher where Jamie got her rabbit, and I paid close attention to how she cooked it because it was scrumptious.

We had no reservations about ham, a traditional Christian food for such auspicious occasions as Easter and Christmas. We maintained the hoary tradition for our Sunday celebration,

My Easters will forever be enriched knowing that grown ups can still enjoy Easter egg hunts, wear silly hats, and smile for the camera.

What are your Easter traditions?

Wa:k Pow Wow

We cannot take credit for this wonderful photo.
It's taken from the Wa:k Pow Wow Facebook page.

We had the good fortune of attending the pow wow in San Xavier del Bac (or, in the alphabet devised to write the Pima language used by the Tohono O'odham people, Wa:k). The Wa:k Pow Wow is the largest in Southern Arizona and attracts indigenous people from several states; many from Oklahoma.

The Mission San Xavier is a small place and a small portion of the Tohono O'odham ("Desert People") nation, most of its allocated land being on the other side of the Baboquivari Mountains. But San Xavier is just south of Tucson and boasts the most beautiful mission church in the United States. The church is a five-star must-see, obviously popular with tourists who not only get to see the "Dove of the Desert", but also get a good glimpse of how indigenous people like the Tohono O'odham preserve their traditions, in this example, many of which are adopted and adapted from the Spanish.

The Pow Wow was held down the hill behind the church in a dusty baseball diamond surrounded by modest metal bleachers. Around the area were numerous booths selling jewelry, T'-shirts, bottles of cold water, and probably close to ten or twelve areas selling what seems to the the major export from the San Xavier Mission: fry bread.

We got seats in the already crowded venue about an hour before the "Grand Entry", scheduled for one o'clock that Saturday afternoon. We saw white people wearing Kokopelli T-shirts (a somewhat sexually vulgar symbol to indigenous people) and brown people wearing Cleveland Indian baseball caps. But what impressed us most was the friendliness we experienced everywhere. Nice people.

Apache drumming and chanting filled the time as one, then two gourd dancers, both older men, elegantly stepped around the open area. During breaks in the chant, a jovial, soft-spoken announcer talked about the schedule, indigenous people, encouraging participants to get ready, and not block others' view.

The Grand Entry was a parade that came down the hill below the church. The crowd had thickened in that area, so the announcer asked the people to move aside to let the parade through. "It's like what the government asked indigenous people to do," he sweetly jested. All laughed. The entire atmosphere was so friendly, there was no room for misunderstanding.

The Grand Entry was led by four flag-bearers carrying the flags of the United States, Arizona, the Tohono O'odham nation, and the black flag for those missing in action that originated out of the Vietnam experience. The participants followed, dancing to the sound of drums and chanting.

I confess. I teared up. People were honoring symbols associated with the prejudice, violence, and greed that robbed them of land, livelihood, culture, and life.

Some white folks joined the parade and danced with the elegantly dressed participants. The announcer had encouraged any and all to join in. That's a pretty amazing invitation on oh so many levels.

Young Americans

David Bowie's passing makes me reflect because he is associated with some very significant events in my life. I suspect this is not the case for my siblings and I don't know how true this may be for later generations, but let me explain.

We were raised on a diet of classical music, complete with music lessons. Mine was the violin. We inherited my father's disdain for all things modern-popular and he considered the Beatles to be no better than monkeys. My older siblings listened to Bill Haley, Buddy Holley and Beach Boys genres, but the British Invasion didn't really register with our Hungarian family in Sydney.

Even in high school in Seattle, my musical diet was playing classical music records on the family turntable while I lay on the couch imagining I was conducting or playing the solo.

By the time I started university, my living situation changed. It was the same house, but my house-mates had become rowdy friends. I had a car, I fed myself, we figured out how to get beer underage, and I had less reason to get haircuts. It was a very different environment, but I still clung to my father's deprecation of monkey-music.

That first year in college, l was driving my two-tone Chevy Nova home, south on 15th NE, left onto NE 55th, and an immediate right into the alley behind our house on 5224 15th NE. For some reason I don't remember, I had the car radio on a rock station. Sufragette City (1972) was playing. I was mesmerized. I couldn't believe how great it was. I had never heard anything like it. I pulled into my parking spot behind the house and kept the engine running. I had to hear the entire song and find out what it was. The DJ said David Bowie, Sufragette City.

From that experience, I got into Rock music. It was only a matter of time before I would succumb to cultural influences, but still, it all began that first time listening to Bowie.

His Space Oddity (1969) became a bit of anthem for my four to five year career as a pizza truck driver. My name is Tom. Bowie sings about Major Tom. It was a good fit made perfect because the drivers communicated with the dispatcher using CB radios. "Ground control to Major Tom."

Rebel, Rebel (1974) was played on record often enough, and under less than sober circumstances, that we anticipated every cracking sound scratched into the vinyl grooves. The musical climax for a 5224 kegger often was Jean Jeannie (1973).

When I broke up with Carla, I was devastated. Although I instigated the breakup, I became desperately depressed. Pulling myself out of that was another major watershed in my life, but during the process Young Americans (1975) and especially Sorrow (1973) gave me opportunity to express my grief. Young Americans also expressed my acceptance of being American, something I'd resisted through high school. Odd, a young American identity acceptance coming from a Britisher.

Time passed and I made friends with a gay former priest. Shelly's Leg was the place for gay guys to go dancing and it was the disco era. (If you don't know what Shelly's Leg was, look it up on the internet. There is a Wikipedia article on it.) By God those men could move. I associate Bowie's Fame (1975) with that wonderful, if superficial exposure to the gay world.

Time passes and I take my main squeeze to my most extravagantly favorite date: dinner at the Oyster Bar on Chuckanut Drive. As Shari and I drive through the Skagit flats towards home on Whidbey, intoxicated with lamb, sorbet, chocolate, and port, I remember playing Rebel Rebel, the sultry version by Ricky Lee Jones.

Time continues to pass and my music taste favors stuff you find in the Ethnic or World Music bins of a CD store, if there is any such shop still around. My iPod still has what's left of my six or seven Bowie vinyl collection, but there are few boisterous occasions when I dial up a youthful, rebellious rock song. As for current popular music, I checked out when New Wave turned to Grunge. I suppose I'm of an older generation and I like to complain that they don't make music like they used to.

Three days ago, for some reason that not even Shari knows, she decided to read the Wikipedia article on David Bowie. She was fascinated by the description of his education at Bromley Technical High School. David Bowie never meant much to her, but she urged me to read it. Two days later, yesterday, we woke up to the news that he had died.

BBC America, the news half-hour that shames every other American news or quasi-news program, put on a wonderful fifteen minute tribute to David Bowie last night. Afterwards, I put on my head phones and watched several You Tube videos of Bowie, then played some of those old vinyl tracks on my iPod. The man was amazing, and his exit from life pure artistic class.

It's a pity we wait for obituaries to celebrate someone's achievements. The accolades from people who know popular culture better than I consistently praise Bowie's genius, creativity, originality, and performance. They say his work influenced all who followed. If David Bowie is new to you, do yourself a favor. Become a Young American, if only for a senior moment.

Happy Halcyon Days

Admittedly, "halcyon days" is an obscure expression. A dear friend, for whom Christmas means work throughout most of the year rather than celebrations at year-end, introduced me to the expression. I quickly adopted it because any inclusive expression of good cheer for year-end has my vote.

The word "halcyon" is obscure. It comes from the ancient Greek and refers to a species of kingfisher bird that was associated with calm weather during the winter solstice. Look it up. Calm sea is a nice association if you are an ancient Greek whose livelihood depended upon sailing the Aegean in open rowboats with a flat sail.

Winter solstice by Aravaipa Creek.

The meaning of halcyon days is an obscurity within an obscurity. The calm weather associated with kingfishers mating in the open sea during a period of calm in winter gave rise to another association: memories of good times.

If anything defines the winter holiday season, it's the memory and celebration of the good days of yore. Arguably, that's what Christmas has become. It's a lot less a celebration of the birth of any particular spiritual Master or religion, than it is a celebration of customs that we associate with the arrival of winter. Some of the "Christmas" traditions (Santa Claus, reindeer, and Christmas tree decorations) have roots in shamanic culture. (The part about Amanita mascara mushrooms as an origin of Christmas tree baubles is intriguing.)

The last weeks of the year are a great time to slow down, reflect, and celebrate; to at least get out of the groove of ordinary life. Actually, each season offers its opportunity to celebrate, but winter may be the grandest opportunity because we need the celebration most when it's getting old and dark outside. In this seasonal context, Christmas is only one night and a day, only one set of celebrations and expressions within a larger and longer context.

Hence I have no problem with "Season's Greetings", "Happy Holidays", "Happy Hanukkah", "God Jul", "Happy Diwali", or "Let's Get Loose for Saturnalia". Some are closer to my traditions than others. Sadly, literal Muslims make it a religious duty to eschew any celebration of a solstice, a bit like literal Christians who complain about Starbuck's plain red holiday cups. But even in the world of Islam, such traditions survive; e.g., Yalda festival. "Happy Halcyon Days" ought not offend Muslims or Christians, but it may be too obscure. I'm open to suggestions.

Happy Winter Solstice Celebrations! May the New Year bring us all happiness, health, friendships, and a modicum of prosperity!

Assaying the Cauldron

Imagine people bringing items to a garage sale where other, more nicely dressed people sit at tables and render opinions on the items' values before television cameras. Of course, you have the Antiques Road Show.

The AR Show came to Tucson last Saturday. Weeks before, Shari had gotten an email from PBS and she applied for tickets. We were surprised to get them. Shari felt quite fortunate and privileged. She planned to take her copper cooking cauldron from Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, some Georgian period earrings, a solid gold cigarette lighter, and some old Korean and Chinese pottery. I didn't want to take the cauldron. It is big and bulky and weighs seventeen pounds, but it's historical and Shari wanted to learn more about it.

The Show was at the Tucson Convention Center and our appointment was at two o'clock in the afternoon. We got two tickets and instructions that each of us could bring two items. It also came with the suggestion to bring some portable seats. Wise. They knew what was involved.

The Cauldron

The Convention Center is a big facility. We didn't realize just how big, nor did we realize how many people had received tickets for the AR Show. The $10 parking lots were jammed, cars cruised the streets looking for space, and all sorts of people were streaming back and forth from the Center carrying odd packages. The downtown area was so congested, Shari decided to give up and return home.

I had not really wanted to go in the first place, and I don't like crowds, but I also like the challenge of finding a free parking place on the street. I knew that Shari had really been looking forward to the Show. Fortunately, we had taken our nimble Agamemnon (our bronze-colored Honda Fit) and we found a place to park only four blocks away.

I don't like being conspicuous, but I certainly was carrying the cauldron. Shari carried a bag and two folding camp stools she purchased from Big-5 the day before. We approached a couple of older people on the street carrying packages and walking away from the Center. Shari asked them about the crowd. They said it was really bad. There had been an electrical fire at the Center earlier that morning, so everything was running late.

We trudged on in the heat of the day, me carrying the cauldron across the street, down a sidewalk, through one entrance, out another, down some steps, and into the grand entrance, a really large area crowded with people and packages loosely organized into serpentine lines according to their appointment time. We almost turned around and left. Somehow, we just kept going.

The scene reminded me of photographs of Polish refugees carrying a few possessions as they fled the German invasion, or a horrendous line at an airport TSA security check. But the odd packages that people were carrying, pulling, and carting looked more chaotic-refugee than carry-on luggage. People carried large paintings, some brown paper wrapped, others just plucked off the walls. Garden carts, kids' Flyer vehicles, grocery store carts, and furniture dollies were used to drag heavier items. There were shopping bags, rifle bags, gun boxes, and rolled up carpets. I carried the cauldron, which drew quite a few comments.

The people were even more interesting. They were heavily weighted towards the elderly, some in wheelchairs, others carrying oxygen bottles. Those carrying the gun bags tended to be younger. Despite the crowds and the long wait, the entire scene was quite subdued. The AR Show folks had the system down. Scores and scores of docents wearing "AR" T-shirts herded and guided the crowd into organized lines.

The lines inched slowly — too slow to really move, too fast to really sit on our collapsable stools. There was a serpentine line in the grand entrance hall that switch-backed into another, even larger hall where we got a chance to sit and wait. Then we snaked out that hall, down some escalators, and into the really big hall that was laid out with crowd-control streamers (like those crime scene tapes that police use) that segregated the area and the people into about twenty or thirty alternating switchback queues.

One advantage of spending some five hours in crowded lines is the chance to meet people you otherwise wouldn't. It's a variation of the stagecoach phenomenon.

In the entrance hall, the first fellow we talked with was in his fifties and had been in the Air Force stationed in Turkey. At first, comparing notes about travel in Eastern Turkey and Spain was interesting. He proceeded to describe flying munitions and bales of US currency into Iraq, searching for artifacts in the Sonoran Desert, then hangings and Mexican military on the border, working with juvenile offenders, and pretty much anything else to keep going. He wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, he assured us. He was a tea-party guy who had plenty of first-hand experience not to trust the government. He just kept going, even as our portion of the line headed west and his went east. It became awkward.

The person in front of us was a young woman dressed in Gothic black lace with colorful tattoos on her arms, shoulders and neck. She wasn't the type of person with whom I'd ordinarily strike up a conversation, but Shari did. Lisa was delightful, intelligent, and generous in spirit. She was from Wisconsin, presently lived in Portland, Oregon, was staying in Phoenix, and had just arrived the day before from a month trip to Scotland including the island of Iona. She told us about spending six months in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, helping set up a "hippie camp" that brought fresh, organic food donated from Wisconsin and served hundreds of free meals every day. She told us about what the press didn't cover: the families and police who have run the parishes with greed and graft for decades if not centuries.

As if Lisa's and the Air Force fellow's experiences of government were not enough, our third conversation of any length was with a woman who talked about gun-toting survivalists in California. But I'm getting ahead of myself because that took place just before we entered the sanctum sanctorum.

A partition divided the main hall of the Convention Center into two. The first half was set up for the main serpentine line that kept moving slowly and giving little opportunity to sit and rest. A really large screen TV showed scenes from the Antiques Road Show, a "Big Brother" type distraction to help placate and animate the crowd at the same time.

After some four hours of lines, yours truly lugging the cauldron, shifting its weight from one arm to the other, our tickets were punched and we were allowed to enter the other side where a bank of tables were set up. This was the preliminary screening.

People unpacked and revealed their treasures and the nicely dressed screeners handed out tickets identifying whether the item was to be appraised was categorized as Militaria, Jewelry, Collectables (the longest line, we were told), Fabrics, Paintings, Furniture, Photographs, Books, Dolls —you get the idea. The young man was curious about the cauldron. Among all the thousands and thousands of stuff people dragged in, it was unusual. We chose Militaria for the cauldron, but took a Metalwork ticket just in case. Shari got two Asian Arts tickets and one Jewelry.

Inside that other half of the Convention Center was a circular arrangement of portable walls some twenty feet tall, like wagons drawn in a circle or a corral, with multiple entry points labeled with the various item categories. Bright lines taped on the floor marked where people waited to enter for the corresponding category of appraisers. Huge lights peered over the walls facing inside the circular corral. The AR T-shirted docents were even more numerous here.

We opted for the Militaria category line first. That was a mistake which earned us the one-way conversation about survivalists in California. I should have known better. I don't like guns or the gun mentality and it was a cooking pot that we wanted assayed, not something that serves to kill. I began to notice that there were more smiles on the people waiting to go in than on the people coming out.

We finally got inside the corral, the sanctum sanctorum. We had reached nirvana, the portable stage-set for the Antiques Road Show. Appraisers sat behind tables all around in front of signs advertising the item category. In the middle of this large area was the main stage where a lucky few waited (in chairs!) to be interviewed on camera. There were lights, cameras, and technicians everywhere, and the entire area was flooded with an unnatural, evenly bright white light.

The Militaria tables were being presented with revolvers, rifles, bayonets, swords and even something that looked like an old fireman's helmet. I felt awkward hanging onto the cauldron. Our Air Force buddy, who had been in the two o'clock line ahead of us, was in a trance by the side of the Militaria table. He was eavesdropping on everything, unable to take himself away. When we got to the front of the line, we overheard him ask one chap how much his revolver had been appraised for. "A hundred bucks." Our Air Force buddy replied with the air of an expert, "Yeah, that's what I would have said. One or maybe a couple of hundred."

Of course, our cauldron stumped the Militaria appraiser. We got his referral card to go to the Metalwork category. The referral card meant that instead of having to go to the back of the line outside the stage-corral, we could go directly to the line in front of the Metalwork tables inside the stage-corral. Honestly, we were grateful.

Some ten or fifteen minutes later, the Metalworks appraiser was almost as stumped. Shari explained that her Aunt Helene and Uncle Jack had lived in Burgos in the 1970's and purchased the cauldron somewhere in Northern Spain. They were told that it had been used to cook food like horse meat and rabbits for Wellington's army in the Peninsular Campaign — the one against Napoleon, 1807-1812.  The appraiser couldn't confirm horse meat or rabbits, or even its use as a cooking pot for the English army. The cauldron has no identifying marks on it. But she did say that its construction and age were consistent with the story. She said it was worth maybe $800.

Shari replied with something like, "Yes. That's about right. $800 is what I saw one going for on the web."

So we had stood and ambled in line for hours, me dragging the heavy, bulky, copper cauldron for several miles at an agonizingly slow pace, only to find out something we already knew? But we did get confirmation that its metalwork was consistent with the history we already knew.

We decided to take the earrings to the Jewelry table lines. We went to the appropriate queue outside the stage-corral, then realized we had had enough and the odds were that the appraisers would be unable to tell us much. What you see on the show is stuff they recognize from an identification stamp. They never show an appraiser being stumped. Our stuff was way obscure. We left, lugging out treasures back to the car.

What you see on the television program is maybe a half or whole dozen appraisals of items brought by people who are shocked when they learn that their odd treasure is, well, a treasure (for insurance purposes). What you don't see are thousands and thousands of other people who, that same day, had dragged their garage sale treasures through hours of lines only to be told their stuff was of minimal value.

What you do not get from the TV show are the appraiser's junk jokes. Can you imagine the variety of stuff that's presented to them? For example, one woman was carrying a huge, plain and ghastly painting of the crucifixion. We saw no appraiser bursting out with uncontrollable laughter. Each appraiser and each AR T-shirt wearing docent was impeccably polite and upbeat. Well, the Metalworks appraiser did joke a bit sarcastically, "Oh, is that what they told you?" But given their long day, their aplomb was remarkable.  Oh but the stories they could tell!

What the television program does elicit is the viewer's philosophical observation on human nature. We value something in dollars more than its aesthetics or history. It's true that Antiques Road Show is interesting because of the history the appraisers reveal about an item, but the punchline is its value (for insurance purposes). What motivated thousands of people was less the aesthetic history of their stuff and more the hope of a substantial dollar validation of its value to others.

Certainly, money motivates the appraisers to spend all day looking at questionable junk. The Show rules prevent them from entering into any business through the program, but serving as an appraiser on the Show does wonders on their resume so they can attract other business. The commissions they earn from finding buyers for valuable items can be enormous.

When we actually saw the onslaught of people with their hoped-for treasures, philosophical observations about people and money were inescapable. Even so, we and hopefully many others left the Show with a better appreciation of what we had. Every item, regardless of its monetary value (for insurance purposes), represents a history, a story made up of not only of the people who had made the item and the times in which they lived, but also of the people who had acquired and passed on the items.

What is most amazing about the crowded tumult that is the Antiques Road Show are all the stories that each person brings with them.