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.

A New Year

I don't know about others', but my New Year's Day was a lot like my Old Year's Day. True, from one day to the next, it became a holiday, the weather got milder, and there were even more gridiron games on the television. But the sun still came up, just like it did the year before, and I still took the dog for a walk in the wash.

In the last days of the Old Year I found myself web-surfing for Roman quotes. They fascinate me. Cicero particularly is a great source, not just because he may be the greatest statesman and orator of the Roman world, but also because so much of his writing has survived. The thoughts of two millennia ago inspire even today. No wonder the literate, Mediterranean ancients were the foundation and pleasure of Western education for most of twenty centuries.

The one Stoic thought that spun in my mind is that the goal is not a long life, but a deep one. That's a nice contemplation for New Year's, one that gave me permission to walk a little slower with the dog and take more time to marvel at my surroundings.

To Cicero is attributed the quote, "A room without books is like a body without a soul." Very likely, Cicero didn't write that, but he did write, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

Which, on a New Year's Day as I slowed down to move rocks and trim brush in our little acre of the Sonoran Desert, reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from Star Trek. In a flash forward in time (there's that time thing again), an aging Jean Luc wearing a broad rimmed straw hat is tending a small vineyard.

So in addition to wishing everyone much happiness for Twenty-Sixteen, I also wish all the great depth and the sense of belonging that attend happiness.

Post script: There's another Cicero quote which surely is not his, but it made me laugh loudly all the same. "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book."

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!

Happy Hundredth

73rd Birthday.

Today is my father's hundredth birthday.

Paul kept a framed copy of this 1916
photo of him with his mother.

Paul Palotás (the family name was Paulik when he was born) was born a hundred years ago, on December 13 in 1915, in Nagyszombat, Upper Hungary (Felvidék). He passed away in 2007, about five weeks short of ninety-two.

The world has seen intense and unsettling changes in his century. He was a child of the First World War of cavalry sabres, massed attacks, water-cooled machine guns, trenches and poisonous gas. That war dismembered his parents' country. They became refugees, his parents lost their savings, then he and his brother became orphaned young teenagers.

Graduation photo, 1937.

In the next World War, a war of revenge, he was twenty-eight and a first lieutentant on the Don River front. The Soviet army counter-attacked and destroyed a Hungarian army, and then his world. He, his wife Irene, and three small children became refugees.

From Austria to Australia, Paul and his wife worked odd jobs until they salvaged a discarded, hand-powered knitting machine. That was the beginning of a successful knitwear manufacturing business in Sydney which they named Suzy Parker.

After eighteen years in Australia, they had raised five children complete with private schools, private music, ballet and acrobatics classes, and our own private Hungarian language world. They sold the business and we moved to America. We became not refugees but immigrants.

"1967 Édesapád" - "Your sweet father"

The business went bankrupt, promises to pay became worthless, and Dad became impoverished while his university-educated kids embarked upon their successful careers in the States. He got a job working graveyard shift in a Greek owned knitwear factory in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard.

Paul never realized his get-rich-quick dreams literally, but in a much more real and meaningful sense. After his five kids were on their own and he was struggling with the career of a commercial real estate broker, he met Darany Mingmaninakin. Together they shared three decades of affection, traditions, travel, occasional business, and generosity.

He enjoyed a long semi-retirement: frugal but rich in experience. He taught himself to use a computer and wrote the initial draft of his autobiography in a self-taught foreign language, English. He wrote it very well. He taught himself to use computer and email to correspond with military academy colleagues around the world.

With Darany in Hárkány, Hungary, two weeks before his passing.

He and Darany traveled extensively: Thailand, China, Indonesia, Australia, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Venezuela and Turkey, to name a few. Only two weeks before his death, at the age of almost 92, he happily endured the long flights from Seattle to Budapest without bother or complaint.

Everywhere he explored his Hungarian heritage and connections. His orderly during the war, the soldier who was his personal assistant, perished on the Don River along with a hundred thousand other Hungarians. Paul made it a point to financially support his orderly's widow and descendants. He established a trust for the benefit of Hungarian war orphans. It was Paul's agitation that got a plaque dedicated to the fallen of his Ludovika Military Academy class.

Alaska, 2003

He finished his autobiography in Hungarian, published in Budapest under an optimistic Hungarian title that translates, The Cock Crows, Sunrise Is Coming. He collaborated on another Hungarian publication that translates, We Are an Eastern People, arguing that Hungarians should ally with China and the Far East.

He was a self-made man, two, three times over. He remained outspoken and controversial, intellectually active like a precocious high school student, a proud Hungarian and a man of the world.

It's hard to believe his and my lives overlap and encompass a century. I often look in a mirror and see the features of my father's face looking back.

Boldog születésnapot, Édesapu.

Clay Results with Roshi Roy

My ashtray looks great on the side table outside the dining room window. Neither Shari nor I smoke, but the shiny clear glaze over the porcelain slip and the outline of an African sumac leaf blend perfectly with the outdoor setting and add a distinct touch of class.

My other sumac leaf design also came out nicely.

To make the form, my Clay Guru and I rolled out a piece of flat clay, like flour dough with a roling pin, then I impressed the leaf shapes. A plastic bowl, used for mixing slips and glazes, served as the form. We picked up the piece of flat clay, carefully placed it over the edges of the top of the bowl, then Clay Master Roy picked up both and dropped them together. The clay sank into the bowl. I trimmed the edge and the clay was allowed to dry for the week. ("Like leather," Master Roy kept repeating.)

My first piece was a stick-made vase. Clay Swami Roy showed me how to roll a cylinder of clay on the table with the fingers of my flat hand, then push a pointed stick through its middle. More rolling with the stick, place the clay on end, pull out the stick, and insert a thicker stick. Repeat with increasing thickness until the desired shape is realized.

The bottom is easy. Roll some flat clay, mark the approximate shape of the clay cylinder, rough up and moisten where they will join, then join and trim.

Incising designs on the outside proved challenging because I had no ideas. Clay studios have all sorts of funny specialized tools augmented with an assortment of kitchen gadgets and other bits and stuff commandered to shape clay. I gravitated to a tool that looked like it was made to cut small balls out of a watermelon. I used it to press a circle of rounds.

Then I ran out of ideas. I just scratched the bottom portion, inscribed parallel lines on the top portion and flayed out the rim. I was anxious to get to the glazing, wondering about how to fit brush strokes inside a pretty small pot.

Glazing, as my Clay Swami proved, can be quite simple if you have five-gallon buckets of mixed glaze lying around. We went for plum color. "You haven't done this before, so let me show you." Good advice from Adept Roy.

He grabbed a plastic scoop, actually, a former yogurt container, and ladled gobs of the smooth, dark goop inside my bisqued pot and swirled it around so the insides were evenly coated. Then Clay Rabbi Roy made me hold the pot upside down and dip its top into the bucket of dark goop. Like coating strawberries with chocolate. So much for brushwork.

The following week we saw the fired results. There is a high probability of unpredictability to firing glazed clay. My plum-glazed pot has green blotches. Clay Effendi Roy explained something about minerals in the glaze separating in the firing process. Cobalt oxide? didn't fully understand, except that Clay Sheikh Roy seemed very pleased with the result.

My first ceramic has been pressed into kitchen service. Our copper basket was getting full of whisks, spoons, tongs, spatulas and ladles. Wooden spoons look great in my ceramic pot.

For my next project, I'm thinking of a rectangular casket for holding pens, or an open lantern made with strips of clay. I will defer to the guidance of my Clay Rinpoche Roy, and I still have a leather-dry form of a platter to shape, bisque and glaze. Roshi Roy is inspiring.

Beep Beep

Wiley Coyote cartoons introduced me to roadrunners, but I've never heard a roadrunner go "beep, beep" or seen a coyote open a box of Acme dynamite and read the instructions.

We often see roadrunners on our little acre of the Sonoran Desert. They seem friendly enough and not too afraid.

I suppose they don't confuse people with food or predators. Like hummingbirds, they don't get too concerned about our presence, although they are curious. They go about their business, which seems to involve constantly moving.

It's tough to have enough time to fetch a camera and take a snap, but yesterday, one of these fine looking, graceful birds decided to leisurely stroll through our backyard. That gave me time to grab the camera.

These snaps were taken through various back windows as the roadrunner took its exploratory stroll. It ended up by the goldfish pond, seemingly puzzled by the cinderblock walls that enclose our backyard. It explored the mineral garden by our ash reliquary.

It was curious about the water in the pond. It may have taken a drink. I don't know. I was running from bedroom to bedroom, poking the camera through window shutters.

The bird made no attempt at fishing. I suppose goldfish are not a part of its routine diet. Do roadrunners swim? Probably not.

Finally it took advantage of the African sumac tree behind the pond to scamper up to the top of the wall. A few minutes later, it had disappeared.

In life, roadrunners (and coyotes) are impressive and graceful creatures. To see such a being is like getting a warm smile from a stranger.

Clay

One of Shari's pieces, naturally formed.
It's bisqued and ready
to be glazed and fired.

It's good to have hobbies in one's dotage, to be creative in the gnarly years of old age retirement. Why not pottery?

It helps that our very good friend Roy Lizama is not only a master potter who helps run a studio, but also has the patience to instruct a complete wonker — your author.

The author, carefully brushing
a porcelain slip onto his
ashtray masterpiece.

I come to clay with only the childhood experience of playing with small tubes of colored plasticine.

Shari immediately went to the top of the class with a couple of stunning vases that copy a style we admire so much in Roy's work:  make a cylinder in dark clay, roll it in dry, powdered white porcelain, then stretch it so cracks appear. Simple? Try it.

My goal is more humble. I am working on an ash tray.

We've had four classes so far. Our works have been bisqued (the preliminary firing) and last week we played with glaze. Perhaps next Tuesday we will see the final results.

Stay tuned.