Jim Ott's Blog

Library Scrabble scramble!

2012-01-13T09:06:00.000-08:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Times on January 12, 2012.

As a journalist, I often get a close-up look at events around our city and I enjoy recreating those experiences in print so I can bring you along.

Join me now as we attend the first-ever elementary and middle school Scrabble tournament held at the Pleasanton Library. We’ll meet a few people and look over the shoulders of the kids to see some of the cool words the youngsters played.

If you’d arrived with me at the library just after 10 a.m. on January 3, you would have seen some 40 students and their parents checking in for the tournament in the children’s area. Picture a diversity of eager faces and various ages from third to eighth grade.

As the kids were being seated four to a table within their age groups, I asked Megan Slone, age 13, to share what she hoped to get out of the day’s experience.

“I hope to win,” she said, smiling. Megan was attending with her brother Russell, age 9, accompanied by their father Victor.

Similarly, Vivek Palekar shared what prompted him to bring his ten-year-old son to the tournament: “Vishal is an avid reader and a spelling bee champion in his class at Lydiksen Elementary,” said Palekar, “so I knew he would enjoy this event.”

Librarian John Mitchell welcomed the participants and outlined the tournament rules. He explained that no students would be eliminated during the day-long event since the winners would be determined by total points earned. He also noted that the prizes would be gift cards of $25, $15, and $10 to Towne Center Books for first, second, and third place for the two competitions of third through fifth grade and sixth through eighth grade.

Mitchell answered a few questions, and then asked parents to leave the room so the tournament could begin. As the students played, I quietly chatted with Mitchell and Chris Spitzel, another librarian who was helping with the tournament. I learned about other programs offered for children at the library, such as Paws to Read, Friday Story Time, and the Booklegger program. Spitzel is the coordinator for this program and encourages readers to consider volunteering since she could use a few more adults to go into Pleasanton classrooms to promote books and reading.

As the tournament continued, I jotted down many of the words being played. Here are some you would have seen along with me: kitten, ogre, lasso, amulet, skinner, reap, gnome, math, omit, pesky, ablaze, and fever. I was also struck by two simple words that seemed to capture the spirit of the day: fun and hip.

After the tournament, Mitchell announced the winners: Abhat Sawkar, age 14, won first place for his age group with 509 points; and Blake Youngquist, age 10, won first place for his group with 446 points.

As the participants departed, Sandy Silva, who oversees children’s services for the library, glanced through the student feedback forms. “We hoped this would be a fun and educational social outing for students,” she said, “and judging from this feedback, it looks like the day was a success.”

Spitzel added that she was impressed not only with the quality of the words that were played but the positive manner in which the kids competed. “It took some bravery to come and compete today,” she said. “All the students should be proud.”

For more information about youth programs at the library, or to volunteer for the Booklegger program, contact the Pleasanton Library through its website at www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us/services/library.

Local surgeon climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro

2011-08-31T20:52:00.002-07:00

This column was published in August 2011 in Bay Area News Group newspapers.

While many of us stayed around town during the dog days of summer, local resident Alexandra Burgar, who goes by Sandi, spent her vacation climbing the tallest mountain on the African continent: Mount Kilimanjaro.

Burgar, who is 39 and practices medicine in Pleasanton as an orthopedic hand and arm surgeon, was away ten days, including seven days of trekking.

“The first day of climbing was through a muddy rainforest,” she said, noting that Kilimanjaro’s geography includes climate zones ranging from rain forest to alpine desert to the snow cap.

Hiking with guides and porters, Burgar and four fellow trekkers (three men from California and a woman from Texas) followed what is known as the Machame Route, or the Whiskey Route, one of six routes to the summit.

On the second day of the climb, the team encountered cold rain as they climbed to 12,500 feet. They also happened upon other groups, including three youngsters from Holland. “Their English was better than mine,” Burgar joked.

Day three took the travelers through a region of cold and wet fog, across shale and rocks. “The vegetation looked like it came from a movie set for Star Trek,” Burgar said.

On the fourth day of climbing, Burgar caught her first glimpse of the summit as the fog cleared for about five minutes. Reaching 13,255 feet of elevation by day’s end, many trekkers fall victim to the extreme altitude and are forced to descend. In fact, online sources note that typically only 30% of climbers reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, and many people die on the mountain each year due to falling, poor preparation, hypothermia, and the effects of altitude.

Though even experienced porters have died on the mountain, Burgar found these hard-working men to be especially resilient.

“They are all friendly,” she said, adding that a daily occurrence took some getting used to: “Each day as we were hiking, we’d hear hurried footsteps coming from behind.” The porters would rapidly sweep past the trekkers carrying all the gear to set up the next camp. “It was a bit demoralizing at first, but then it became a source of entertainment for us,” she said.

Day five comes just before the final ascent to the summit. This is alpine desert and was covered in cold, miserable fog. To make matters worse, the region provides little opportunity to “use the internet café,” a euphemism Burgar said refers to using an outdoor restroom.

After arriving at camp, the team was treated to Coca Cola and Snickers bars, which Burgar described as "heaven." They were then instructed to have an early dinner and get to bed early because reaching the summit and getting back the next day meant beginning at 11:30 p.m. and hiking through the night.

The final ascent, while not too long, is very steep, Burgar said, and the loose terrain through the skree causes each footstep to backslide. After hours of struggling to breathe and putting one foot in front of the other with no sense of direction, Burgar recalls arriving at Stella Point with temperatures at 17 degrees and probably closer to zero degrees given the wind chill: “We had a few hundred yards to go and about 300 feet in elevation,” she said. “I knew I’d make it.”

Many people consider Stella Point the summit, but Uhuru Peak, which stands at 19,341 feet, is the tallest point in Africa. Telling herself to just keep going, the time became 6:30 a.m., and--as if on cue--the sun inched above the mountain and through the clouds, and Burgar saw the sign that said she’d reached the summit.

Burgar’s fingers were too numb to take pictures and the lack of oxygen made her slighly delirious, so a Maasai guide named Mr. Kim snapped photos. “We didn’t stay long at the summit,” she said, noting that the downhill trek back to camp only took a few hours since the trekkers were able to slide down the skree of the mountain.

Arriving home, Burgar didn’t realize quite what she’d accomplished until she looked at the photos. "Much of the trip consisted of following a guide and not recognizing distances we covered," she said. "It wasn't like running a marathon where you can see what you're accomplishing."

Burgar also said that despite the enormous aerobic effort every day, she didn't heat up as she trekked. "It was surreal," she said. "The altitude and cold kept us from ever getting heated up as we walked."

Burgar is proud to add this trip to her world travels. An avid athlete and runner, she has the distinction of having run on every continent in the world, including the final continent on her list, Antarctica, in March 2011.

To read Burgar's blog and to see photos of the trip, visit http://kilimanjaro2011teamcaltex.shutterfly.com/.

Text saves teen's life

2011-03-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Can a text message save a life? A 16-year-old teenager from Livermore says yes. Here’s the story of Christian, whose last name is being withheld for privacy.

Christian used to live in Sacramento, and because his mother was a drug addict, one day police raided their home to take his mother away.

He remembers her yelling at him, saying the arrest was his fault. She also said if it weren’t for him she would be happy.

Still, just before the police led her away, Christian shouted, “Mommy, I love you!”

Her response continues to haunt him.

“She said she didn’t love me and that if I loved her, I wouldn’t have let this happen,” he said.

This was one of the last times he saw her, and these devastating words changed his life. Although he was placed in a loving foster home, then adopted, and given everything he needed to succeed in life, his birth mother’s words stayed with him.

“I still felt so alone,” he said.

For attention, Christian started acting out in school and in church. He never talked to anyone about what he was going through. “I hid my feelings because I didn’t think anyone would care,” he said. In fact, Christian decided that whenever he had negative thoughts, he would force himself not to think about them. When this didn’t work and he became depressed, he decided to hide this as well.

This led to nightmares in which his mother’s words were repeated over and over.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, so at age 13 he started drinking and using drugs. Finding only temporary relief, he tried to drown himself in a lake while working at a camp one summer. Half drunk, Christian fell into the lake and sank into the water’s darkness. He remembers the moon starting to fade when a senior camp employee jumped in and saved his life.

Several months later in December 2009, he attended a party where a girl he knew asked him what was wrong.

“I froze,” he said. “How did she know? I thought I was able to hide my world from everyone.”

Over the next six months, Christian told his friend about his boyhood. It felt good to talk about it, he said. When she learned about his use of drugs and alcohol, she told him to stop. Christian tried, but couldn’t stop. So again he saw only one solution: suicide. In June 2010, as he cut into his arm and the blood began to flow in his sink, he heard a buzz in his room from his cell phone.

“It was a text from my friend,” he said. She had typed “Sup,” short for “What’s up?”

“That text stopped me from killing myself,” Christian said. He decided to respond, and that was enough to distract him “from one of the stupidest decisions of my life,” he said.

Christian opened up even more to his friend. Again she wanted him to stop his substance abuse, but this time she asked him instead of telling him.

“I realized it was my choice now,” he said.

So Christian stopped. He started to focus on what matters in life. He grew closer to his parents. He stayed in touch with his friend.

“I was learning how to die and she taught me how to live,” he said.

Christian knows that life will be hard for him. “I will run into problems and I will stumble,” he said, “but as long I have my God, my family, and my friends, I will make it through.”

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Young man revisits mother’s death

2011-02-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

This column was published by Bay Area News Group in February 2011

When Brian Walker was ten years old, he came upon a scene he had never seen before.

“I found my mom smoking,” he said. “I didn’t know she smoked.”

Still, it wasn’t the smoking that sent a chill through the young boy.

“It was her face. She seemed numb,” he said.

Walker, who is 22 and lives in Pleasanton, said his mother died the next day from a fall from a second story window onto a concrete surface in the backyard. Exactly how she managed to fall remains a mystery. Perhaps an accident, perhaps suicide, whatever happened quietly haunted Walker for many years.

“I was the only one in my family to see my mom alive on her last day,” said Walker, his brown eyes softening.

Walker explained that his parents were divorced, and he and his brothers had spent the night at his father’s house.

“By some fate, I’d forgotten a project at my mom’s house,” Walker said. “So she brought it to my school.”

Standing in front of Walker’s friends that October morning minutes before the bell rang, Nancy Walker bid her son farewell for the last time.

“Have a great day today,” she said, “I love you.”

At age ten, his friends surrounding him, Walker wordlessly raised a hand in a curt farewell. What he did not do was say three simple words to his mother he wishes he said that morning.

“Words are not meaningless,” Walker said. “They have power and can create things both wonderful and monstrous.”

The three most magical words are I love you, he said.

After the death, Walker’s world was different. His friends seemed afraid of saying the wrong thing around him. He watched his older brother struggle with the loss of their mother, while the youngest brother grew up not remembering her.

“Through it all and for many years I told everyone I was fine,” Walker said. “I wanted to be stable, someone I thought my mom would be proud of.”

But, of course, Walker was not fine.

“The hero always manages to utter those three words right before their loved one quietly fades from this world,” Walker said. “But I was no hero.”

Walker had watched his mother spiral into depression, yet did nothing to help her. If he could turn back time, he would put out that cigarette and ask if she was okay.

“I would have sat down with her, hugged her, and told her I loved her,” he said.

After graduating from high school, Walker felt many pressures build in his life. As his sense of guilt finally began to emerge, he began to act recklessly, and in desperation he turned to his father.

“A lot was happening in my life,” Walker said. “I asked my dad to tell me what he knew about my mom’s death.”

His father reassured his son that she had not killed herself, that the fall was just an accident. These words, along with hearing from others that there are easier ways to kill oneself than jumping from a window just two stories high, allowed Walker to realize he had been needlessly blaming himself for a role he did not have in his mother’s death.

Since then Walker has found a purpose and stability in his life.

“The universe is not kind and we cannot rescind our mistakes,” he said. “But we can learn from them, make peace with them, and live our lives.”

Nancy Walker’s death was twelve years ago. Since then her son has learned much about life.

“I think she would be proud of me,” he said.

A puppet, a little girl, and a magical memory

2010-11-23T09:05:00.000-08:00

This column was published in the Bay Area News Group newspapers in November 2010.

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We are thankful for many blessings at Thanksgiving.

Most of our thanks are for big moments, such as the safe return home of a loved one from Iraq or the birth of a healthy baby. But sometimes we give thanks for little things, like a memory of mine I’ll share in a moment.

Whatever the blessing, everything we’re thankful for has an element of joy in it, and because we know that not everyone is as fortunate as we are, we feel a sense of wonder and magic in the gifts of our lives.

One such gift is my vivid memory of an evening when my now 18-year-old daughter, Melissa, was four years old and I was putting her to bed and preparing to tell a bedtime story.

Picture a little girl’s bedroom. In one corner among several dolls is the odd presence of 24-inch ventriloquist dummy in a red jacket and black bowtie. His head and hands are plastic, and his eyebrows and hair are painted on, just like the eternal twinkle in his eye.

This dummy was a toy Santa brought me when I was a little boy. While some readers will remember ventriloquist puppets such as Charlie McCarthy, Danny O’ Day, and Mortimer Snerd, this was a Jerry Mahoney puppet produced in the 1960s by the Juro Novelty Company.

As a kid, I loved this little fellow. He became my companion, keeping me company as I drew pictures or did homework. He always smiled and listened without interrupting. I learned to become a ventriloquist listening to Jimmy Nelson's Instant Ventriloquism record that taught me how, with a little practice, the letter d could become a b-sound and how the letter n could mimic the sound of the letter m. I even entered school talent shows and entertained my friends.

As I grew into adulthood, I kept Jerry stored away in closets, occasionally bringing him out at family get-togethers. He attended my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary, and one Christmas morning Jerry ended up being passed around the living room as my siblings and other family members took turns pulling his string and making him say a few words. We laughed as each of us came up with something funny for him to say.

After my daughter was born and started to play with dolls, I introduced her to Jerry and I would make him talk for her. He started hanging around her room, no doubt pleased to be an active toy again.

So on this particular evening, my daughter climbed into bed and spotted Jerry.

“Daddy,” she said, “make Jerry talk.”

I pulled him onto my lap and he started to ask Melissa about her day. In his typical high voice, he asked about her friends and what games she liked to play.

I watched her blue eyes, fixed on the puppet, enchanted as she answered his questions.

And then she stopped and looked at me and asked in her sweet, four-year-old voice, “You’re making him talk, right?”

At that moment I realized the power of performance and art to transport us. Even when we know we’re watching an act, sometimes the magic feels so real. This is why the English poet and philosopher Coleridge wrote that poetry and art come alive when we willingly suspend our disbelief.

That’s what Melissa was doing, even as I answered yes, I was making Jerry talk.

For such memories and all our blessings this Thanksgiving season, let’s be thankful.

Looking for a new pet? Think chickens.

2010-10-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Bay Area News Group papers on October 14, 2010.

Many people have dogs and cats as pets. Some have chickens.

“We think of them as low maintenance pets,” said Sondra Perry, who with her husband bought three baby chicks eight months ago after removing the grass from their San Ramon backyard to create a garden.

“We got the chickens to help with the bugs and to improve the soil,” she said. “We also liked the idea of having fresh eggs.”

The couple, who grew up around horses but not chickens, kept the chicks indoors for 90 days before moving them outside into a yellow hen house.

Named Mother, Raven and Braveheart, the chickens recently began laying eggs and produce about three eggs every day, one from each chicken.

“The chickens were my husband’s idea,” Perry said. “He likes them and they follow him into the garden waiting for him to overturn something so they can get fresh bugs.”

While the San Ramon couple’s children are grown, Perry said chickens are great for kids.
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Susan Case agrees. “Our four-year-old daughter calls our chickens chirpies,” said Case, who lives in Pleasanton. “She helps feed them and checks their water.”

Purchased in March, three of the five chickens are named Ming-Ming, Jello, and Rudolph.

“It’s not that we don't want to name the other two,” Case said, “but their personalities haven't shown yet.”
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Case said when the chickens were younger, Ming-Ming, who resembles a cartoon character with the same name, would sit on the handlebars of her daughter’s tricycle as she rode around.

“Surprisingly, that poor chicken held on,” said Case, although Ming-Ming had a “deer-in-the-headlight look” during such excursions.

Along with teaching pet care, Case said the chickens offer an opportunity to teach math and counting.

“My daughter counts the eggs and if they’re in different nesting boxes, we ask her to explain how they add together,” Case said.

While the Case family owns five chickens, six is the limit in Pleasanton, and that’s the number owed by Jana Halle, another Pleasanton resident who teaches middle school and has owned chickens for several years. Her chickens are named Trudy (actually, Trudy-With-An-Attitudy, she explains,) Dottie, Deedee, Dori, Sunny and Shady.

Halle said families with backyard chickens should avoid roosters, which can disturb neighbors when they crow in the early morning. Pet chickens should be hens, and it’s important to pay attention to breed, she said. Bantams are smaller chickens and suitable for a backyard. Bantams include several types, and Halle owns four Wyandottes and two English Game hens.

Halle said some people assume hens can’t lay eggs without a rooster in the house. This isn’t true. The eggs won’t hatch into chicks, but hens still lay eggs, she said.

Because it’s difficult to tell the difference between baby hens and roosters, Halle tells a funny story about watching one of two young Wyandottes develop a prominent comb, what she called a kind of Elvis Presley look.

“I thought maybe I’d purchased a rooster by accident,” she said.

Because she would never kill a chicken, she researched chicken sanctuaries and was ready to drop off her rooster. But before she did, she separated the two maturing Wyandottes overnight and requested they each lay an egg to prove they were hens. In the morning, Halle was relieved to find an egg under each chicken.

Halle, like Perry and Case, recommends chickens as pets, as long as families do their homework and understand the commitment required to properly care for and clean up after the animals.

“I love my chickens,” said Halle.

Sometimes life comes out of left field

2010-09-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

A version of this column appeared in the Bay Area News Group papers on September 2, 2010

Early in 2009, our family learned that our daughter Kelsey, then 13, was experiencing rapid kidney failure.

This is the girl who at age 10 had titanium rods inserted along her spine to correct scoliosis.

The same girl whose heart doctors opened at age 3 to repair a leaky valve.

As if these challenges weren’t enough, Kelsey was born with a genetic condition called Jeune Syndrome that makes her small for her age and restricts her lung capacity. Unlike her dad, she’ll likely never run marathons.

So last summer Kelsey went on dialysis at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. And thanks to the incredible generosity of her aunt Theresa, Kelsey received a new kidney just one month later in July 2009.

Today Kelsey is doing well and feeling healthy, so when she was invited by the hospital to the August 21 Oakland A’s baseball game with her family, she said she’d love to go.

In the days before the game, we learned more details. This wasn’t just any baseball outing. In fact, Kelsey had a special task to complete just before the game.

Enter Rob Combi of Lafayette, whose son Cole has received two kidney transplants. Combi connected with Oakland A’s vice president Jim Leahey with the idea of having the A’s promote organ donation. They enlisted the support of A’s catcher Landon Powell, who will one day need a liver transplant. Called Donate Life Night, the theme for the evening was organ donation, with $4 of each ticket donated to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

To kick off the game, Combi and Leahy arranged for five children who’d received transplants to run onto the field to a designated player.

So after enjoying an afternoon barbecue and spending time with doctors and medical staff who had also been invited to the game, the kids donned A’s shirts and were given a pen and baseball to be signed by their player. Cole Combi was selected to throw out the first pitch.

From Kelsey’s blog, here’s what happened next: “Finally, we were at the edge of the field. I asked many questions because I did not want to run to the wrong place. And so, when we were told to run, I ran to left field.”

Kelsey explains that for some reason her player wasn’t there, so she was directed to run to center field. She continues, “I got to the player I was assigned to. I didn't know much about the A's, but afterward I realized I was standing next to Rajai Davis during the National Anthem. He signed my baseball, and I ran back.”

After we got to our seats, Kelsey expressed concern she’d run to the wrong place on the field. But soon she realized that many kids would love to say they ran from left field to center field in the Oakland Coliseum.

Needless to say, Kelsey has learned to keep life in perspective.

In her blog, she reminds us to be thankful for our health. She writes about kids who are waiting for livers, kidneys, and hearts. “And yes, even intestines,” she writes. “I know of a little boy who was in need of intestines.”

Also needless to say, our family now has a favorite team: the Oakland A’s.

And Kelsey’s story, along with the stories of those kids who ran onto the field that late afternoon, are why we all need to sign up to become organ donors.

“Most adults complain,” Kelsey writes. “Please, next time you run out of gas, your cell phone runs out of battery, or you get called for jury duty, remember: while you're getting called for jury duty, some kids are getting called for chemotherapy.”

To be ready to save someone’s life, visit www.ctdn.org.

From Silicon Valley to the Silver Screen

2010-08-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Bay Area News Group papers in June 2010.

Pete Saulnier was 58 when he was laid off from his job two years ago. Aside from serving four years in the Air Force, Saulnier worked his entire life in Silicon Valley.

“My first job was in 1968 with IBM,” said Saulnier, who lives in Livermore.

Uncertain where to turn for employment and knowing most companies wouldn’t hire a man almost 60, he remembered that several associates over the years told him he had a “voice for radio.”

“So in 2009 I decided to take voice-over classes in San Francisco,” said Saulnier, who then connected with people in the commercial and entertainment business.

After lending his voice to promotional and other spots, Saulnier was asked a question he never thought he would hear in his life: “I was asked if I wanted to act in a feature-length film,” he said.
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With this 6 foot height, long hair and beard, and his resonant voice, Saulnier was perfect for the role of a background character, and he jumped at the chance to appear in the movie, titled “Two Mothers.”

Soon Saulnier was offered opportunities to appear on television and in other films. In just over a year, he’s now appeared in 5 feature length films and 13 short films.

His appearances include roles as a pedestrian, a hospital patient, a coffee shop patron, a news photographer, a homeless person, a college professor, a bartender, an office worker, a Russian bodyguard, and a detective.

“I never know what character I might be from one day to the next,” said Saulnier.

On television, he appeared in a PBS production titled “The Grand Café,” as well as in “America’s Most Wanted” and the NBC/Universal series “Trauma.” Saulnier will also play a suspect in a criminal lineup in an upcoming episode of “Mythbusters,” scheduled to air in the coming months.

According to Saulnier, the pay for acting roles can vary widely, from zero to $250 per hour and more. New actors will often work for free to build their resumes or if they want to support a certain production company or effort.

Saulnier credits the Livermore Valley Film Commission with promoting the film industry in the Tri-Valley, which has helped him find several acting opportunities.

“I wasn’t aware how much filming is done right here,” he said. “Film making is good for our local economy.”

Saulnier notes that film crews bring money into the region by booking hotels, renting local equipment, employing caterers, and using other services. In fact, he has become a volunteer ambassador for the commission when he is auditioning or acting.

“I encourage producers to contact the film commission for their next project,” he said.
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Along with acting and promoting the region, Saulnier is also involved with Big Burrito Media, a start-up visual media company that promotes authors and books via the web and creates animation, web-TV series, film, and social networking advertisements to help its customers maximize the marketing potential of the internet.

Taking stock of his life these past two years, Saulnier doesn’t miss his former commute from Livermore to the Silicon Valley. Instead, he looks forward every day to his new work and the variety it brings.

For anyone out of work, he offers these words of advice: “Look for new ideas in your life. If you have a hobby or a certain talent, embrace it. It just might be your next career.”

To see Saulnier in a 4-minute short film, visit www.YouTube.com and search by typing “Saulnier” and “Take a seat.” For more information about Big Burrito Media, visit www.bigburritomedia.blogspot.com.

Former Olympian and teacher still an inspiration

2010-08-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Bay Area News Group papers in July 2010.
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Pictured below in 1961 is cyclist Bob Tetzlaff (left) with Nevada City Bicycle Race founder Charlie Allert. The photo was taken in Nevada City, the first year of the race. Tetzlaff took first place. He returned in 1962 to win the race again. He went on to many victories, was inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 1974 founded (with his wife Lorine) the Cat's Hill Criterium in Los Gatos, a race that continues annually.

In 1962, two years after competing as a cyclist in the Olympics in Rome, Bob Tetzlaff taught his first class of elementary students.

Throughout his 40-year career, he had a knack for sharing stories that served to teach and inspire. I know this because I was in his class in the fifth grade.

Picture a 1967 classroom in Los Gatos, California. The pencil sharpener is full of fresh shavings. In front of the classroom stands a graduate of UCLA, 32 years old, born in Milwaukee, clean-cut in a suit and tie.

His passion for teaching fills the room. We learn more than arithmetic or grammar. We learn that opportunity can present itself even in the most unusual circumstances.

Mr. Tetzlaff teaches us this as he tells about a day when he was training with a bayonet in 1958 in the pouring rain at Ford Hood, Texas. A sergeant shouted to him to come forward. Thinking he was in trouble, Tetzlaff learned that the Army knew he was a cyclist and arranged for him to compete for Team USA. This led to placing sixth in the Pan American Games and competing in the Olympics. In that moment in the army his life was changed.

After school, I look up the Olympics in our family’s encyclopedia. I imagine the discipline it would take to become a cyclist or marathon runner. I decide that tomorrow at recess--instead of playing tetherball--I'll run across the expanse of lawn of the school yard to the far fence.

The next day in class, Mr. Tetzlaff doesn’t tell us that his nickname was “King of the Road” after winning so many road races or that in 1959 he won the national “Best All Around” rider award and took sixth place in the Pan American Games in Chicago.

Instead, we’re learning history. He knows that details about his victories are not what matter. What matters is that he knows our names and cares about us, that he is teaching us to write and to think, and that we are the reason he comes to work every day.

I learned well from him, since today I have a passion for teaching and cycling that I can trace back to Mr. Tetzlaff. He is listed in my roster of great teachers, and after I moved away from Los Gatos, I often wished I’d thanked him. As time ticked on, I feared I might miss my chance.

Then last month I was in Grass Valley visiting relatives for Father’s Day, and Nevada City was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its classic bike race. The newspaper said several prior race winners would be on hand at a reception the evening before the race, including the 1961 and 1962 champion, Bob Tetzlaff.

Seeing opportunity in the unusual circumstances, I invited my 18-year-old daughter to make the short drive with me to Nevada City. As we walked toward the theater on Broad Street, I wondered how much he may have changed with time. Stepping inside, I instantly recognized Mr. Tetzlaff.

“That’s him,” I told my daughter. We had to wait only a few moments. Because of the noisy, crowded lobby, I leaned in to say I’d been one of his students. Emotion caught me off guard as I told him I’m an avid cyclist and distance runner, and that I’d been inspired by him.

We chatted for a few minutes and my daughter took a picture of us. We met his wife, Lorine, and we learned that he still teaches part time, even in retirement.

So Mr. Tetzlaff, on behalf of all the students who never got the chance to say so, thank you for being a great teacher, for being a role model, and for the difference you’ve made in our lives.

Jim Ott with his teacher Bob Tetzlaff, taken in Nevada City in June 2010. Photo by Melissa Ott
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NOTE: This column generated many emails from people who knew or competed against Tetzlaff. Here is a sampling of the emails I received:

Mr. Ott,

Thanks for your story about Bob Tetzlaff and for remembering him as I do. I too had "Mr. T" as a teacher. 1973/74, 5th grade, Daves Ave School in LG and I remember him fondly. His name comes up when I'm asked the "best teacher you ever had" question.

Remember the old "Cat's Hill Bike Race" he organized every year? Good times.

I often think of him, especially during the Tour, and glad you tracked him down to find him well. Funny though. All these years I have thought of him as a Mexico City Olympic athlete. Thanks for setting it straight.

I too am an avid road cyclist and marathoner and like to think Mr. Tetzlaff has inspired me to compete and enjoy doing it.

Thanks again. Your story made my day.

-Ben Clayden
Danville, CA

. . . . . . . .

Jim,

Nice article on Bob. He's still the king.

George Mount

[Note: George Mount is an American former professional cyclist. Mount was sixth at the 1976 Montreal Olympics road race which launched his professional career and propelled the US into post-war international cycling. He raced professionally in the US and Europe, the first American to break into European road racing. Mount was inducted to the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame.]

. . . . . . . .

Jim,

Wonderful essay on Bob Tetzlaff. I raced against him a few times in the 60's, and I can say that it was not only his classroom students who learned a lot from him and were inspired by him. I personally was very motivated by his example and, as a result, have found great satisfaction in my brief racing career and as a life-long avid cyclist.

Hope to see you on the road!

Cheers,

John Nidecker
Team Alameda
Santa Rosa CC
ex-Berkeley Wheelmen
ex-Pedali Alpini

. . . . . . . .

Jim,

Thanks for the great tribute to Bob. I met him in 1964, my first year of bike racing. Indeed, he was a well liked mentor to many of us young bikies.

Bob and Lorine have been regular attendees of our annual Old Farts ride, now in its 30th year. My wife, Tena, keeps the email list of some 200 riders, and she sent the link to your column to everyone. I'll forward some comments from Skip Cutting who was a member of the '68 Olympic team.

BTW, I'm also an adjunct anatomy teacher at Las Positas College. And I was in Nevada City for the race on Father's Day. As a spectator, of course. I had read about the reunion of previous winners in the same newspaper.

John Gallagher

. . . . . . . .

Skip Cutting wrote the following to Tena after she sent out the column through email:

Tena,

Thanks for sending this out. Bob is such a kind person, and of course, was a wonderful cyclist. I managed to beat him in the sprint finish at the Tour of Solvang in 1963 - my first 'big' win - and I was so excited to have beat the King.

Afterwards, we ran into each other in the bar at Mattie's Tavern, where the finish was, and Bob bought me a beer (of course, I was only 17 and didn't drink beer - but what the heck...). I was blown away, that this guy I just beat would do such a thing. One of my first great lessons on true championism.

I spoke to Bob on the phone a couple of years ago -- it was wonderful to talk with him, and reminisce....

He is a guy who, in my opinion, should not be forgotten for a myriad of reasons. If you see him, please render our best wishes.

Regarding the Ol' Farts ride, can't make it this year, but please keep me on the list - one never knows about the next.... I am riding, really training pretty darned hard. My training partner is younger and we are getting him prepped for the Master's Natz in a couple of weeks in Louisville. So everyday, we follow the training schedule that I have concocted - and every day he works me over. My wife says it is just another example of poetic justice....

Because of the article on Bob, I am forwarding this email to the guys from the '68 Olympic Team that I have addresses for. Thanks again.

Best, Skip

100 miles of endurance

2010-06-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald and Valley Times in June 2010

On Saturday, June 26, 2010, Marianne Paulson will join more than 450 other athletes in her third attempt to run 100 miles in the Western States Endurance Run.

Paulson, who grew up in Norway and now lives in Pleasanton, has finished nine other 100-mile races. She's extremely fit for a 46-year-old mother of three boys who is celebrating 20 years of marriage this July.
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As she toes the line at this year's race, Paulson hopes to avoid the encounter that delayed her last effort in 2007 when, after she'd run 97 miles, a large bear blocked the trail and refused to move. This caused Paulson and another runner to miss a crucial time cut-off by 13 minutes, dashing their chances for an official finish under 30 hours.
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The annual Western States run starts in Squaw Valley and climbs 2,550 vertical feet in the first 4½ miles. The route then follows the original trails used by the gold and silver miners of the 1850s. Traveling west, runners climb another 15,540 feet and descend 22,970 feet before reaching Auburn.
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In other words, it's one heck of a run that takes two days with no sleep. Rivers are crossed, joys are beheld, hopes are smashed, sleep-deprived hallucinations emerge, tears are shed, and many runners don't finish. But not a single runner would trade being anywhere else.
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Three other Pleasanton runners--all in their mid 40s--will also compete this year, including Ron Rel, a 44-year-old software executive who only recently began running ultra distances after becoming internationally ranked in XTERRA races, which are rugged-terrain triathlons.
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Rel said running Western States is the equivalent of “stepping off into an abyss” since he's never before run 100 miles.
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For Harris Goodman, a pathologist who works at Alameda County Medical Center and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, running Western States is the next step in what started as a way to get out of the house about 10 years ago.

“I was a bookworm,” said Goodman, 46. “I didn’t like running at first.” But at the suggestion of his wife, he took one of his children for a long run in a jogger stroller, and Goodman got hooked. Since those days, he's finished 22 ultra-marathons, including two 100-mile races.
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Also at the start line in Squaw Valley will be Dan Boyle, who ran Western States in 2007. Boyle and his wife Diann, who is also an ultra distance runner, are pilots for Southwest Airlines. (Because runners are largely selected by lottery to get into Western States, Diann was not chosen this year.)
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“I was an overweight chess geek in school,” said Dan Boyle, 46. “I run ultras because they’re on trails instead of roads. The camaraderie, atmosphere and scenery are awesome.”
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[Dan Boyle, left, with Ron Rel]
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All of the runners from Pleasanton are married and have children, ranging in ages from 6 months to 16 years. Finding the time to train for 100 miles is often as challenging as the run itself.
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Along with morning and evening runs during the week, typical long training runs begin at 3 in the morning on Saturday or Sunday and end five hours later, in time to get home to spend time with family. Each runner credits his or her spouse with essential support.
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A favorite training area is the Pleasanton ridge, where the steep trails are similar to those along the Western States route. Such training comes with its share of risks, and not just from injuries. On a recent ridge run, Paulson saw a mountain lion crossing the trail 100 yards ahead of her. Similarly, Goodman encountered a bear on a training run along the Western States trail itself.
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Along with the Pleasanton competitors, other local Western States runners this year include James Richards and Elizabeth Vitalis from Livermore; Marc Dube, Suzie Lister, and David Rhodes from San Ramon; and Mark Overhoff and Dan Burke from Danville.
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So why run 100 miles? What's the appeal? The responses are many.
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Marianne Paulson has this to say: "I love life outdoors and to challenge myself--and I guess I am a bit adventurous. I like the excitement of not knowing what is ahead, like a burst of energy, a low point, or a beautiful waterfall. Training for and completing a 100 miler is very strategic and you have to execute the plan and make changes along the way to make it to the finish. The race itself is extremely interesting and you find out a lot about yourself. I find out something new every time and I guess that is what causes me to want to do it again. It is also a great feeling to be very physical fit. You have to be or you won't be able to make it to the finish line."
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Dan Boyle said running long distances challenges his limits to see what he can accomplish. “It's just me, the trail, and the clock, and no one else to blame if I fail. When I succeed, it’s extremely gratifying,” he said.
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For Harris Goodman, running ultra distances is fun. "Yes, it really is fun and relaxing," he says. "And the support from other ultrarunners is incredible. The100 mile events are not you against other runners, but you against the course, so everyone is so supportive and helpful. Also, you can't believe what you can accomplish until you try."
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Ron Rel sums it up well when he says he will attempt 100 miles "because I don't know if I can do it. I’m going to find out what I’m made of.”
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. ....

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Harris Goodman with world-known ultra marathoner Dean Karnazes

Bringing Teddy Roosevelt to life

2010-05-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Contra Costa Times newspapers on May 27, 2010.

A man will grow a mustache for many reasons, but to look like a dead president? That’s what Orinda’s Fred Rutledge did last week to bring to life Theodore Roosevelt in an evening lecture series sponsored by Pleasanton’s Museum on Main.

Dressed as Roosevelt and standing at a lectern draped with an American flag, Rutledge told about 100 attendees at a Pleasanton church earlier this month that he’d just returned from spending four days with John Muir.

Working from historical documents, Rutledge took the audience back to May 1903, some two years into Roosevelt's presidency and the day he emerged from his historic Yosemite trip where the president and Muir eluded secret service and the press corps: “Just the two of us,” said Rutledge as Roosevelt, “by the campfire underneath the oldest living trees stretching high above into the starry night sky, talking, laughing, story-telling.”

Employing a mid-Atlantic accent, Rutledge filled his talk with historical tidbits, including the revelation that Roosevelt’s often-quoted “Speak softly and carry a big stick” comes from an African proverb.

Rutledge also illuminated Roosevelt’s shifting view of nature as a source of national raw materials to a source of beauty in need of protection: “I am still sort of a hunter,” said Rutledge as Roosevelt, “although a lover of nature first. When I hear of the destruction of a species I feel as if all the works of some great writer had perished.”

Rutledge, 53, fell in love with history thanks to his parents who often sat around the kitchen table in their Piedmont home talking about historical topics. He attended San Francisco State University and St. Mary’s College. Having served as an Army Reservist, he’s now in the California State Military Reserve.

“Like Roosevelt, I’m a full colonel,” said Rutledge, who is also the Chief of Staff of the California Center for Military History.

His first portrayal of Roosevelt occurred in April 1999 after meeting Muir impersonator Steve Pauley at the Muir House in Martinez. Pauley had been looking for someone to portray Roosevelt to recreate scenes from that 1903 Yosemite camping trip. At the time, Rutledge had been participating in an educational program for schools where he would dress in Civil War and other uniforms to share what it was like to be a soldier in times past, so it was a natural step for Rutledge to portray Roosevelt.

The 1903 camping trip presentation was such a success that the two were invited to do the same dialogue for the Contra Costa County Mayors' Dinner a few months later in July 1999.

“I remember saying to the group after they applauded how nice it was to see such a large group of Republicans,” said Rutledge, referring to Roosevelt’s political party. “That almost got a universal laugh,” he said.

Rutledge has since gone on to appear several times as Roosevelt, including as the keynote speaker a few years ago at a July 4 picnic in Pleasanton. His efforts earned him an Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal by the Army in 2004.

In his professional life, Rutledge oversees educational programs at Santa Rita Jail for the Tri-Valley Regional Occupational Program. He said he enjoys portraying Roosevelt because it offers others a glimpse of the past, just as holding a book or historic postcard connects us to those who came before us.

“I love history,” said Rutledge. “It keeps us in touch with our ancestors and gives us a sense of direction.”

For more about the Pleasanton lecture series and upcoming speakers and events, visit

www.museumonmain.org.

2010-05-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

A shorter version of this column and this photo appeared in the Valley Times and the Tri-Valley Herald in May 2010.

This is a story of two inspiring people whose lives connected 12 years ago in an elementary school in Pleasanton, California.

Josh Burger is a senior at Pleasanton’s Amador Valley High School, and Patricia Poor has been his aide since he was in first grade.

“I only expected to work with Josh for a year because doctors predicted he wouldn’t live very long,” said Poor, who lives in San Ramon. “But Josh surprised us all.”

In fact, Burger was expected to live only a few minutes after an ultrasound showed a disfigured 20-week fetus.

“The doctors recommended abortion,” said Burger, who weighs just 32 pounds. “But my parents believed God created me for a reason and it wasn’t their right to end my short life.”

Called Atelosteogenesis Syndrome Type III, Burger’s condition is so rare that fewer than 10 people in the world have it, and he’s the oldest-known survivor. Every bone in his body is misshapen. He has only one functional lung and an enlarged heart. He’s missing bones in his legs and can’t walk. He can’t bend the fingers in his right hand. He is deaf without hearing aids, didn’t speak until age 5, and was born with a cleft palate.

Yet Burger beat the odds and survived his first years of life. Determined to have her son experience life to the fullest, Burger's mother enrolled him in first grade. There they both met Patricia Poor.

Born in England, Poor moved to southern California in 1970 in her early twenties. She eventually moved to the Tri-Valley where she earned her associate of arts degree in Special Education at Chabot and Las Positas Colleges. With this training, she applied to become a special aide for a special boy, and she got the job.

“I’ve enjoyed assisting Josh,” said Poor, who has the distinction of being one of the only adults to attend every single grade all over again as the boy became a young man. “Josh has a positive outlook and every day says something to make me laugh.”

For Burger, his outlook on life has not always been so positive.

“In second grade I realized I was different from everyone else,” he said. “I was frustrated when I couldn’t ride a bike or hold a pencil right or wear shoes.”

Burger’s frustration turned into tears and anger. “I was mad at God,” he said.

But after several months, his anger ebbed as Burger realized that “maybe my little body was God’s gift to me and what I did with it, and with my life, was my gift back to Him.”

According to Frank Burger, Josh’s father, Poor played a vital role 7 hours a day, 180 days a year for 12 years encouraging and protecting his son. “Josh has learned to be more independent through her nudging,” he said. “We’ve never worried about him because of her guiding care and how she taught other children to show respect for him.”

Today, Josh Burger gets around lying on his stomach on a motorized wheelchair he controls. His accomplishments include meeting George Bush and helping raise money for Paul Newman’s Painted Turtle Camp for disabled kids where he met celebrities such as Tom Hanks.

After Hurricane Katrina, Burger raised relief funds by getting a Mohawk haircut, wearing wrap-around sunglasses and having a Chihuahua stand on his back as he patrolled the Pleasanton Farmer’s Market for donations. He and his friends raised $30,000.

In June, Burger and Poor will say their goodbyes as he graduates and she retires. Like his aide, he plans to attend Las Positas College. Although his prognosis and life expectancy is unknown, Burger looks forward to discovering what’s next after graduation.

“Like everyone, I want to do something with my life," he said. "Something great.”

Seeking redemption and the edges of our limits

2010-04-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

Last year I participated in a one-day 206-mile bike ride called the Devil Mountain Double Century. I got as far as 165 miles and dropped out.

My excuse?

I’d run a 50-mile race just two weeks before and was still feeling the effects of that ultra-marathon.

Not to mention I’d never ridden a “double century,” which by definition is two 100-mile rides combined into one long day. In fact, the Devil Mountain Double registration form states “This should not be your first double! This is a very tough ride.” And later, “You have been warned!”

For a 50-something baby boomer like me who heard the call of endurance sports when Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in 1972, placing a warning about the difficulty of an event makes the appeal that much stronger.

The moment I dropped out of last year’s ride, I started planning my revenge for 2010. My diabolical plan was to skip the 50-mile run, cycle many miles, add weight training to strengthen my core and legs, and ride, at least once, every section of the route--especially the toughest climbs--to gain course knowledge.

Keep in mind, the DMD course includes 20,000 feet of elevation gain. Some 200 riders from as far away as England signed up for the event that took place on April 24. And this year we were joined by ultra-marathon legend Ann Trason who won the Western States 100-Mile Endurance run 14 times.
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The DMD starts in San Ramon and goes over Mt. Diablo, over Morgan Territory Road, out to Tracy, back up Patterson Pass, out Tesla Road in Livermore to Mines Road, up to the top of Mt. Hamilton, down into San Jose and then into the foothills via Sierra Road, down Calaveras Road to Sunol, out Niles Canyon and up Palomares to Crow Canyon and Norris Canyon, and finishes back in San Ramon.
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Since misery loves company, I was joined this year by Steve Sherman, a local attorney who has finished two Ironman competitions and yet, like me, had never ridden a double century. We trained together, not just cycling on Saturdays but often running with our spouses and friends Jerry Pentin and Tom Hall usually 12 miles over mountain trails along the Pleasanton ridge on Sundays.

In keeping with my not-so-secret plan to beat the devil, Steve and I rode every part of the course, sometimes several times. This was no small feat since we both lead extremely busy professional lives. But such commitment in the workplace is why these weekend rides are so vital to our physical and mental health. Cycling and running keeps us fit and, frankly, sane.

One of our favorite weekend training rides was Sierra Road in San Jose, an incredibly steep hill that is part of the Amgen Tour of California route that bites cyclists at approximately 150 miles during DMD. We knew that on the day of ride, we'd want to know exactly where we were and how far we had to go to the top of that monster.

For our training rides, we were often joined by several friends, including Bryan Gillette who is such an amazing cyclist that this year he set a goal to ride the DMD and then continue on to 300 miles in 24 hours “because I’ve never tested my limits,” he said. This 300-mile idea to push his outer limits prompted Jerry Pentin to re-title Bryan's ride "DMT," or Devil Mountain Triple.

Jerry is also credited with redefining DMD to mean Dumb Means Dumb, since he refuses on principle to ride any farther than 100 miles at one time.
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Yes, I know. I probably do need to find a new group of friends. Though I can't think of better people to hang with on weekends. Plus, I'd easily trust my life in their hands.
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When the big day arrived, we awoke early to drive to the San Ramon Marriott where everyone saddled up to ride at 5 a.m.
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Steve and I set out on our odyssey, accompanied by Jerry who rode with us 9 miles to the base of Mt. Diablo. (See photo above with Jerry, me, and Steve.)

The ride was supported by 99 incredible volunteers who worked the rest stops, patrolled the roads to assist cyclists with flat tires and other needs, and offered rides for those who opted out along the way. We can't thank these volunteers enough for their energy and enthusiasm.

Somewhere around 80 miles Jan Sherman (Steve's wife) joined us to ride a long stretch to the 90-mile mark. Jan is a strong rider and trained with us during most of the rides. Seeing her friendly face helped boost our spirits.

As the miles ticked by, Steve and I often felt as if we could ride forever. But other times factors conspired to have us question whether we’d be able to finish. Keeping the right amount of calories and electrolytes and fluids in balance is essential to success in long runs and rides.

Like life itself, every endurance event has its high and low points. My low point came as I climbed the hot and difficult miles up Mt. Hamilton. Steve had ridden ahead and as I found myself coming around a certain turn in the road I stopped and got off my bike. I was breathing hard and wanted to quit. I wondered if I just wasn't cut out for such distances. My mind went into survival mode and quickly concluded that I'd never be able to train enough to finish the DMD.

I didn't realize it at the time, but where I'd stopped was only yards from a sad scene.
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While I was aware that several police and paramedic vehicles were blocking the road, I assumed someone had crashed his or her bike and was being assisted. I also assumed it was a cyclist coming downhill, and not a DMD rider.

I later learned that the cyclist was Tom Milton, age 56. He was a DMD rider, and had suffered a heart attack. Efforts to provide CPR were unsuccessful.

I simply had no idea.

As I stood on the edge of this tragedy, a volunteer named Katy came over and asked if I was okay. Another cyclist who looked to be in his 30s walked over as well. I decribed how I felt.

"Nibble on this," he said, as he pulled a quarter-sized tablet from a small plastic case. "It has a sweet taste and will make you feel better."

Neither of their faces showed any sign that a fellow cyclist had lost his life just yards away.

I thanked them, nibbled the tablet, and started to walk with my bike. I passed by the vehicles and never thought to look to see what had happened.
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Within five minutes, my stomach settled and I climbed back on the bike.
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I knew Steve would be at the next rest stop waiting for me, and since he'd been there a while, I stopped only long enough to top off my bottles and guzzle most a Sierra Mist soda, a foreshadowing, perhaps, for the next major hill.

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Sure enough, we soon found ourselves encountering Sierra Road. I was surprised the climb was not as gruesome as I thought it would be. Last year I'd had to walk my bike up most of this beast. This year, I rode.

As day turned to night we came to the rest stop titled Pet the Goat. I’d reached this stop last year and, yes, petted a goat named Aldo. Sadly, Steve never got to meet Aldo, who recently hoofed his way into goat heaven (his owner said he'd led a happy life), but Aldo 2.0 was on hand, along with the little goat’s mommy.

Trust me, after cycling 160 miles along a dark country road, it’s a joy to greet goats, chat with friendly volunteers, and slurp soup.

Of course, not even goats can top the warm embrace of family, friends and spouses who greeted us at the next stop. After meeting up with Jerry (again under cover of darkness), we cycled together to reach 181 miles in the small town of Sunol where so many friendly faces cheered us on.

Seeing my wife Pam was especially wonderful. Getting a hug and kiss from her boosted my resolve to finish.

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So, did we make it? Did I find redemption among the beautiful vistas and desolate roads?
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Yes. We did it.
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Finishing ahead of us were friends Gary Boal and Barry Schwartz.
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And yes, Bryan Gillette accomplished his 300-mile trek to test his limits.
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Of course, only one of us that day truly reached our limit: To Tom Milton's family, please know how sad we are for your loss.
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To my wife and family and friends, thank you for this opportunity to redeem myself.
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And to Steve Sherman, my cycling companion these many months and for over 20 hours on the day of DMD, thanks for listening to my jokes, for your expertise about nutrition, for your moral support, for doing all the math before the ride and during the ride after my capacity to think had shut down, for waiting for me at the top of every hill, and for a day I will never forget. We said we'd do it, and we did, and I'd be honored to ride again with you any time.
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So, how about 60 miles this weekend?
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Local college celebrates Native American experience

2010-03-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

How far back does your family go in California?

Dr. Amber Machamer of Las Positas College has ancestors that date back before the birth of Genghis Khan and Plato. In fact, Machamer’s relatives go back 10,000 years.

“I am Chumash from San Luis Obispo,” she said, referring to her Native American heritage.

Later this month on the evening of April 12, Machamer, who oversees institutional research and planning for the college, will present a documentary and speak about stereotypes, the use of American Indians as mascots, and the culture, history, and beliefs of her tribe to give people a sense of what real American Indian cultures are all about.

“The talk will be more of a question-and-answer session to build understanding with non-Native peoples,” she said. “It's appropriate for all ages.”

Machamer’s presentation is just one of the events to celebrate Native American culture that will occur April 12 to April 17, all of which culminate in the second-annual Pow Wow that last year brought hundreds of people to the campus. This year the Pow Wow will be held on Saturday, April 17 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the college gymnasium.

Mario Jaramillo, this year’s student chairperson for the Native American Pow Wow and Exposition, said that last year’s event drew spectators and participants from all over California and even from other states.

“This is a living, breathing example of Native American culture as it is today,” he said. “The Pow Wow gives everyone a chance to immerse themselves into a world within the United States that has been thousands of years in the making.”

Some readers may remember that the Pow Wow was held for many years in Livermore before being moved to the campus. The event always includes music, dancing, arts and crafts, native food, and other activities and displays.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our students and community members to learn about native culture outside of the classroom setting,” Jaramillo said.

According to Jane McCoy, a history professor at the college, the purpose of the exposition is to encourage a higher sense of cultural awareness within the college and the surrounding communities.

“Last year we had great reviews by the participants,” she said, “and we’re excited to bring the experience back to Las Positas College a second year.”

Other programs include a film festival featuring Native American films that will be shown all day and into the evenings in the Student Center on April 13 and 14.
On the evening of April 15, students will serve Native American food, free of charge, and provide dancers for entertainment including Aztec and California native dancers and a hoop dancer. Food will be served beginning at 6 p.m. and dancing will start at 6:45 p.m.

For Machamer, the week-long events are an opportunity for education about Native American cultures.

“As the original peoples of California,” she said, “we were created here. Spanish mission records trace my family back to the 1770s and primary source documents trace us back even further.”

Machamer explained that when the first Spanish ships came to California shores, her family was there to greet them. Her family’s village, what is today called Avila Beach, is known among Chumash as Tpaxtu, or “place of the whales.”

Many Chumash people were content to live at the new mission established in San Luis Obispo. In fact, with the help of the Chumash, this was the first mission to build its roof with clay tiles made from local adobe.

For details about the Native American Expo and Pow Wow, visit http://nacc.weebly.com/lpc-exposition.html.

Adopted son looks for birth mother

2010-01-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

Published in the Valley Times in December 2009

Tod Pohlmann had always known he was adopted, but it wasn’t until he began his own family that he got serious about finding his birth mother.

Although his adoption records were sealed, Pohlmann, who manages the Starbucks on Santa Rita Road in Pleasanton, knew his mother’s date of birth and her first and middle name.

In fact, over the years he’d tried a few times to find this mystery woman, including a trip to Florida to visit what he believed was his mother’s high school. “The school secretary was very helpful,” Pohlmann said, explaining that she let him look through yearbooks for a girl named Virginia. “When I couldn’t find her, the secretary guessed my mom was a military brat and went to school on the nearby base.”

In his late twenties Pohlmann tried again, visiting a three-storey house on Post Street in San Francisco where he knew his mother had lived in the 1960s. The house was owned by a woman who rented out the second and third floors. “She was so nice to me,” Pohlmann said. “She said she remembered my mom as a tall redhead, but I’m not sure she really remembered her.”

Pohlmann was born in 1967 after his mother had traveled across the country with her cousin and her cousin’s boyfriend to be part of the San Francisco scene. “My dad was in the Navy,” he said. “I was a USO baby.”

Growing up in Milpitas with kind adoptive parents, Pohlmann never felt desperate about finding his birth mother. Still, once married and ready to have a child, he wanted to learn where he’d come from.

So in 1999, with assistance from a search consultant, Pohlmann got the phone number of a woman who matched the facts he knew. Taking a deep breath, he dialed.

“The phone rang a few times and a woman answered,” Pohlmann said. “I told her I was doing genealogical research and had a few questions.”

As the woman confirmed her birth day, year, and place of birth, she paused and asked for his name again. When he told her, her voice cracked.

"When I said she might know what this call was about, she asked for a moment and put the phone down,” he said.

“When she came back she was crying. We talked for more than two hours.”

Pohlmann said his mother, who goes by Vickie, felt a lot of guilt and apologized for giving him up for adoption. He assured her that his parents, who passed away in the early 1990s, had been wonderful and that he had a good life.
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Within weeks of the call, Vickie was on a plane to California to meet her son. The meeting was emotional, and today Pohlmann’s10-year-old daughter Kiley has a grandmother she might otherwise never have met.
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Asked if he would advise adopted children to seek out their birth parents, Pohlmann hesitated, then said he would. “But you never know if you’re going to find the Rockefellers or people who’ll want to move in with you the next day,” he said. “You need to realize the commitment you’re about to make.”
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Next for Pohlmann is whether to find his biological father. With the internet these days, it shouldn’t be difficult. Family members are uncertain, and Pohlmann, who is undecided, wonders whether he'll take this next step.

The examined life is worth living

2009-12-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

Published early December 2009

Each Monday evening at Las Positas College, about 20 students file into their usual seats in my classroom. Their faces are diverse, but their love of learning is singular.

This semester we’ve read Hemingway, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, and other well-known authors. A few weeks ago we finished up Hamlet, reading together and aloud key scenes from the play.

In addition to these great authors, I recently introduced my class to Socrates, the Greek philosopher famous for saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

We learned that Socrates was reportedly ugly, that his parents were not rich, and that he fought in the Peloponnesian War and saved the life of a fellow solider. We also learned that he never wrote down a single sentence describing his philosophy because his principles precluded him from expressing any one set of views.

In fact, if it weren’t for an ambitious student of Socrates named Plato, we’d likely have no record of Socrates’ perspectives, which included taking nothing for granted about life and using inductive reasoning to get to the heart of life’s greatest questions.

This form of reasoning dovetails with a technique known in academic circles as the Socratic method of inquiry in which we ask question after question to dig beneath our assumptions and attempt to arrive at answers about life.

After my short lecture in class about Socrates, I asked students to pull their desks into a circle to participate in a Socratic inquiry. Then I asked someone to volunteer a question worth exploring.

“How about what is virtue?” asked Crystal, who plays for the college basketball team.
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“That’s a great question,” I said, asking her, “What do you think virtue is?”

Crystal and other students offered synonyms such as honesty and always being truthful, and from there we debated whether human nature is inherently good or if we have to be taught such values.

And if we’re inherently good, one student asked, why do people say that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”? And is that statement always true?

Soon we were inquiring and offering ideas about why some members of otherwise successful families turn out to be black sheep—a term we had to define for one student whose first language is Korean.

“I thought sheep were sort of yellow,” he said to our amusement.

As I drove home after class, I was excited that more than 2,400 years after Socrates was sentenced to death in Athens for encouraging youth to question authority, we sat in a circle and pondered the same questions that he and his students wondered about centuries ago.

Class that evening was a reminder that we often take for granted our freedom to speak and think openly about any subject in this country. In Germany in the 1940s, even questioning Hitler’s leadership to a neighbor could be disastrous. In Iran in the 1970s, suggesting that the government was oppressive might result in arrest by the secret police force. And of course today in many countries free speech is restricted.

As I always share with my students, what makes the United States free and keeps us free is recognizing the responsibility we have as citizens to participate in the democratic process. And this means thinking objectively, staying informed about issues from a wide range of sources, and—like Socrates—asking questions and setting priorities about what matters in life.

A lucky knife, a drunken monkey, and other war stories

2009-10-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

A shorter version of this column appeared in the Bay Area Newsgroup newspapers in August 2009. In the first photo below, taken in Vietnam, Sally Trautwein is on the left with Pam, her roommmate at the time

HERE'S A STORY about a lucky pocket knife, a drunken monkey and how war can change you forever.

When Livermore's Sally Trautwein graduated from college in 1962, she went to work for the American Red Cross at an evacuation hospital in South Korea. Her experience was similar to the movie "MASH," she said, "without the war part."

Although Trautwein avoided war in both Korea and in her next assignment in Japan, she was about to encounter the perils of war in Vietnam when she was asked to help set up a Red Cross program in a new field hospital.

"It was early in the war, and I was young and fearless," she said. "I agreed to go."

Trautwein recalls taking a cab to retrieve mail in Saigon. "I was daydreaming," she said, "when I suddenly noticed we were headed away from Saigon toward the Cholon district."

Remembering that a week earlier an American had been kidnapped and held for ransom in the district, Trautwein asked the driver to turn around. He refused and started driving faster. Realizing she was being kidnapped, Trautwein pulled out a pocket knife a sergeant had given her in Japan. Still, the driver ignored her, even as she held the knife to his throat.

"In that moment, I had an epiphany," she said. "I was capable of doing bodily harm to another human being if my life were threatened. I nicked his neck."

At the sight of his blood, the driver slammed on the brakes. Trautwein jumped out and "ran like the wind."

Another brush with death came in the backyard of the villa where she lived with nurses and doctors next to the hospital. Helicopter pilots lived next door, and because the pilots were at risk of attack, an armed American sentry always stood watch.

Trautwein acquired a pet spider monkey that was an alcoholic.

"If we had evening cocktails, the monkey would grab our glasses and finish off our drinks," she said. "It didn't take long for him to get drunk."

One night after the monkey passed out, Trautwein carried him out back to put him to bed in his banana tree. Wearing a very visible white blouse, she heard the sentry yell, "Halt!" She also heard him cock his rifle.

"Instinctively, I ran and dove through the screen door and across the tile floor," she said. Sure enough, he fired, just missing Trautwein and putting a bullet in the building.

"These young kids were scared to death and would shoot before finding out who was there," she said. "We saw many soldiers wounded or killed by friendly fire."

Trautwein nearly encountered death a third time in Vietnam when traveling on a helicopter, which she took a picture of (see below). Here is the story in her own words:

"The third incident came when the commanding officer of the hospital where I was working came to me and said I'd been working too hard and he had arranged for me to have a weekend in Dalat, which was a former French resort in the mountains.

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The commanding officer told me to go to the airport where a plane would take me to the Dalat.

The plane turned out to be Air America, the CIA airline. The two bush pilots were drinking out of paper cups and it wasn't coffee. These guys took incredible risks and were all crazy. We took off, stopping once to land on a dirt runway where we picked up fleeing Vietnamese peasants with chickens in tow.

After a nice weekend in Dalat, I hitched a ride back with a helicopter pilot I knew from the group who lived behind us. He had a reputation as the worse pilot around. It was me, the pilot, the flight surgeon who had never flown before, an old seargent and some kid with a machine gun. .

I sat in the back on a wooden box with ear phones on. It was a cloudy, damp day. We weren't in the air more than 45 minutes when over the phones I heard a jet pilot screaming obscenities and announcing that we were in the middle of his mission. Down on the ground were some Viet Cong troops he was trying to drop napalm on. Of course the people on the ground couldn't touch the jet with anti-aircraft fire because it was too high up. But we were at just the right altitude. .

The Viet Cong started firing. I heard a shot ping on the under belly of the chopper. .

'What am I sitting on?' I asked the seargent. .

'The ammunition, Ma'am' -- he replied. .

Oh great, I thought, my butt is going to be blown to Tokyo! We managed to make it back in one piece, but I asked the commanding officer to never again send me on a vacation!
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There were lots of frightening moments. The Viet Cong were always bombing restaurants that the Americans frequented. To this day I still don't like sitting with my back to a door. Little old ladies with Viet Cong sympathies would walk up and hand you a loaf of bread with a hand grenande in it. After all these years, I still don't like loud noices. I still occasionally have a flash back, although not nearly as often as when I first came back. The night we invaded Iraq I wanted to put a pillow over my head. "
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Trautwein, who today makes her living as a real estate agent in Livermore, says her experience in Vietnam changed her.

"I don't take things for granted," she said. "When I was there I promised that if I survived, I would give back to others and appreciate every day of freedom I have."

In fact, Trautwein has given back, having served 10 years on a school board and now as a volunteer with Wardrobe for Opportunity and Operation Dignity.

Today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bring back memories.

"I still remember all those young boys whose hands I held, whose brows I wiped," she said. "I still pray that it won't be necessary to send any more."

Student writers learn to tell the truth

2009-10-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald and Valley Times in February 2009

Although I’ve enjoyed a long career in banking, I’ve also been teaching English in the evening at Las Positas College since 1997. Teaching allows me to share with young people the importance of good writing in one’s career and in the workplace.

But teaching also provides a chance for me to foster an appreciation for all types of writing, including journalism, poetry, and fiction.

One of my favorite assignments is when my students read a personal essay whose narrator, I tell them, is a young woman who was a student in my class some years ago. The narrator, Celia, was born in 1969 in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an American father.

Celia’s story is compelling. She begins with her memory of “two things about Vietnam, two sounds actually.” The first sound is the upright piano in a bar in Saigon where her mother worked. The second sound is the beating of helicopter blades, “an overpowering sound of fear and salvation,” she writes.

Celia writes in the first person, and we soon discover she is writing not to us as readers, but to the father she never knew. She writes that when she watches movies about Vietnam, she imagines catching a glimpse of her father “in the sunglasses, laughing. There you are.”

The essay explores both the emptiness a young girl can feel growing up when she doesn’t know her father, and the issue of mixed race and identity. She asks, “Am I an American here? Am I Vietnamese? These are not easy questions.”

At one point she expresses what it’s like to inherit the eyes of her father, but the features of her mother. She sees herself as “beautiful, perhaps, sort of Asian. I'm a little white, but not enough. The mind loops and repeats and seeks to make me Caucasian or Asian, like a slide projector automatically adjusting and re-adjusting to bring into focus a multi-dimensional image.”

In another passage, we find Celia looking into a mirror to “respectfully subtract my mother, piece by piece, distilling my face down to what is only white, only you, so that I can picture you.”

As we read, we encounter the horrors of the Vietnam War and realize through subtle language that Celia’s mother, who at 16 fled her village after her parents’ death, became a prostitute in Saigon in the final years of the war. Celia came along before her mother started using contraceptives.

We encounter as well Celia’s realization that in spite of years of a mother’s reassurance, it is unlikely her mother ever knew the “handsome and considerate” young man who was Celia’s father.

“All my life you have been just on the edge of my world,” she writes, “in the shadow of the yard in the snapshot where I ride my first bicycle, just beyond the tree at Christmas where you’ve thrown torn and crumpled paper to make room for new toys.”

I ask my students to write a few paragraphs in response to the essay, to share their feelings about Celia and any parallels or differences to their own lives, as well as what we might learn about writing from the well-crafted prose.

Invariably, the students are moved by the narrator’s story. And when I finally tell them that I am the author of the essay, they are stunned.

Yes, the story about Celia is fiction. Her father? Well, he’s me. After all, as I tell my students, I gave her life.

Why the charade? Because Celia’s story illustrates more powerfully than hours of lecture that as writers we have the privilege and duty to tell the truth about life. The joy of being a writer means we are not limited to the confines of our own tiny lives. In fact, we’re not doing our job unless we explore and portray the collective experience of what it means to be human.

This is what bestselling author Tim O’Brien talks about in The Things They Carried, his 1990 masterpiece about serving as a soldier in Vietnam. He writes that “story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth.”

Good fiction is about telling that truth, and as my students learn through the words of Celia, our own circumstances as writers should never get in the way of that mission.

One boy's miracle

2009-08-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald and the Valley Times in early August, 2009.

Danville’s Jacque Blair calls it both a tragedy and a miracle.
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Seated in a waiting area overlooking a lush patio garden at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Blair and her husband, Rick, described the series of incidents surrounding the failing heart of their 14-year-old son, Nolan.

“He first had difficulty breathing and an elevated heart rate in late May,” Jacque said. “He’d never shown any signs of heart trouble, but tests showed he had an enlarged heart and an abnormal rhythm.” By mid-June, Nolan’s heart rate was over 100 beats per minute.

First treated at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Nolan was transferred to Stanford on July 11 after 19 days of medication failed to resolve the issues.

“His heart continued to struggle,” Rick said, “and he couldn’t keep down any food or liquids.” Complicating matters, Nolan’s kidneys and liver showed signs of inadequate blood flow.

So on July 13, surgeons at Stanford operated and decided to implant a temporary left ventricle device to help Nolan’s heart pump blood.

Awaking the next day, the teenager was unable to talk due to a breathing tube inserted down his throat, so he used a small white board to write out questions about the surgery. When he learned the ventricle device was temporary and that he would need a heart transplant, his eyes grew big.

“Will it be a real heart?” he wrote. Yes, his father answered. A human heart.

“From who?” Nolan asked.

As Rick told his son that the donor would probably be someone about his age and blood type, and would be someone who had just died, a tear formed in Nolan’s eye as he realized he would never be able to thank the donor.

About a week later, on July 24, the Blair family learned that a donor heart had just become available.
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“The doctors said it was a good match,” said Jacque. “Unfortunately, Nolan had a fever during the night and had developed antibodies to heparin,” a medicine that reduces the chance of blood clots after surgery.

The doctors weighed the high risks and decided to go ahead and prepare for the transplant while the heart was in transit. Then, as if the risks weren’t already high enough, the surgeons discovered that the left ventricle device had become infected with staphylococcus.

“They immediately packed the area with antibiotics,” Rick said. The donor heart arrived around 6:30 in the evening.

By 12:30 a.m. on July 25, Nolan’s new heart was in place and pumping. Within a few days, the teen was eating ice cream and taking his first tentative steps up and down the hall.

Doctors have since told the Blairs that if the donor heart had not become available that day, the growing staph infection within Nolan’s heart would have precluded him from ever getting a heart transplant and a second chance at life.

“The timing was amazing. We don’t know the tragedy that occurred to make this donor heart available,” said Jacque. “But we celebrate the life of the donor and the miracle of life this heart brings.”

To create similar miracles in case of tragedy, readers are encouraged to sign up to donate organs at www.donatelifecalifornia.org or by calling 866-797-2366.

Half Dome offers life...and death

2009-07-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

This shorter version of this column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in June 2009

One week before Manoj Kumar ascended Yosemite’s Half Dome, my 17-year-old daughter grasped the same cables from which the San Ramon resident slipped and fell to his death.
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“I can see how easily a person could fall,” said Melissa Ott. “I would’ve been too scared to climb if this accident happened before our hike.”
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Even before last month’s tragic news, my daughter experienced dread as she began to scale the steep incline of slippery granite. I know this because her stepmom and I were with her. We saw her tears on that foggy June afternoon.
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Each year thousands of hikers make the 17-mile round trip hike to the top of Half Dome. I’ve made the trip four times, including as a teen when, prompted by a youthful drive for accomplishment, I ran the distance, climbed the cables, stood atop the summit long enough to take in the view, then scrambled down to run back to Curry Village to my parents.
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For my daughter, this was her first trip. In spite of the fatal accident, I'm hopeful it’s not her last since she gained much from the experience. In fact, she’s written about the hike in her blog.
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Here she describes the thunderous Vernal Falls encountered along the route to Half Dome:

The falls reminded me of something Siddhartha realizes in Hesse’s novel: that water continually moves, but is continually there. That it is transient and always changing, but constantly filling the space. That we are always changing, never the same, always becoming something else, both physically and mentally. It was nice to have an enormous model of the concept right in front of me.
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Later, she writes about the daunting final approach to the summit and innocently foreshadows the tragic death that will happen only seven days later:

That image of the people on the side of the mountain, the open spaces beside the rock where the ground drops out and you’d die a terribly wind-swept death is forever seared into my memory.
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I’ll never forget her bravery as we clung to the cables, pulling ourselves one step at a time up the boards attached to the poles that hold the cables. Though her fear and the difficulty of the climb tempted her to turn back, she also knew “if I wanted to be able to say I’d made it to the top of Half Dome, I’d have to become one of those climbing up the mountain for no reason other than bragging rights and a view.”

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As Melissa reached the top, her achievement was, I believe, why Manoj Kumar climbed to the summit that day. Her words reflect what he experienced upon reaching the top--what all hikers experience up there.

For both Melissa and Kumar, achievements such as climbing Half-Dome have real value and real meaning. Such experiences give us life.

Or do they?

Kumar lost his life pursuing an experience that only comes when we are willing to face our fears and achieve what many people will never try. Yes, his death is tragic and very sad. I feel most sad for his family.

But it's also true that as a frequent hiker who went out with his friends on many occasions, he was doing what he loved.

Those of us who made it to the top that day will never forget our triumph. And in that accomplishment, we honor the life and memory of fellow hiker Manoj Kumar.

A favorite picture on Father's Day

2009-06-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

A shorter version of this column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald and Valley Times just after Father's Day in June 2009.

FOR FATHER'S DAY, I pulled out a favorite black-and-white photograph of my dad giving me a haircut when I was 6 years old. I was curious what I might see through the eyes of a son who recently said goodbye to his father forever.

In the picture, taken by my mom in 1962, I'm looking straight into the lens as my dad, Bill, stands behind me, guiding electric clippers above my right ear.

Old photos are like magic, a way to keep the past present. So peering at the picture, I searched for some kind of message about my father.

And, in fact, I did discover something. But first let me tell you about my dad.

Born in 1930, he spent his early years in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked in a steel mill. His mother died when he was 3, though he didn't find this out until he was 12 or 13 when his father divorced a woman who my dad thought all those years was his mother.

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Not long after my grandfather and his two sons moved to Venice, Calif., my dad, then 15, met a pretty 12-year-old at school named Janet. In time they fell in love and were married the night she graduated from high school.

Billy and his twin brother Bobby enlisted in the Air Force. While my uncle stayed on in the service, my dad became the first in our family to go to college, earning a master's degree. He became an English and history teacher and later a guidance counselor at a community college.

Fast forward through raising three children, touching the lives of thousands of students, seeing the birth of grandchildren and enjoying retirement.

And then one day he didn't feel quite right, and before we knew it, despite intervention and surgery, melanoma reached its fingers deep into my father's body.

On his final day, he waited for me to drive home to Los Gatos. I'd gotten a call that morning from my mom, her voice upbeat, leaving a message on my cell, saying something I don't remember now about my Dad, but something that let me know I needed to come home. This is a gift my parents have, an ability see and express the positive in all things. And given my dad's rough upbringing, it's amazing he didn't view life from a perspective of at least some bitterness.

My brother and sister were already home with our mom when I arrived. My dad's eldest granddaughter was also there, and in fact just a few days earlier all of his grandchilden had come from many miles to gather for a birthday party and to say what we silently knew were final goodbyes. On that day he lay on a hospital bed in my parent's bedroom. He perked up once or twice and smiled a little, and said a few words. But only a faint few.

Now my dad's breathing was labored. His eyes were half-closed, his jaw relaxed. He wasn't asleep, but he wasn't awake.

I sat alone beside his bed and thanked him for being a great dad and for all he'd done for us. And I said to him what he'd said to me so often over the years: "I love you."

Then I stepped away for just a moment, and alone in his room, in a move that would have impressed Houdini, he escaped the vicious grip of cancer.

What I discovered in the photo is the magic that comes from saying what needs to be said to those we love. And so instead of a black and white grief, I experienced peace. Instead of regret, I found strength.

Sure, I'm sad my dad is gone. I miss him. I wish I could call him up right now and say Happy Father's Day. I know he'd respond with a light laugh and a good word.

Yet even now I can hear his voice, and as the photo reveals, he's standing behind me, helping me to look and be my best.

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When doubts linger

2009-05-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on May 26, 2009.

When Kevin Kojimi was a baby and breastfeeding, he never looked into his mother’s eyes.

“Even as a new mom, I knew something was wrong,” said Pleasanton’s Julie Kojimi. “When I lowered him into the bathtub, his back would arch so much his toes would almost touch his head in fear.”

Though several healthcare professionals reassured Kojimi and her husband that their boy was healthy, doubts lingered.

When her son turned two, Kojimi asked the guests to whisper the Happy Birthday song to Kevin, but even the whispers were too loud for him.

“Every instinct in my body said something wasn’t right,” Kojimi said.

Then, soon after turning two, Kevin was diagnosed with autism.

Kojimi went into “research mode” to explore every option to help her son, and discovered Happy Talkers and the School of Imagination.

“They taught Kevin there was a cause and effect to language,” said Kojimi, something many children with autism don’t intuitively understand. “The individual attention provided by the school far exceeds the services of your typical preschool,” she said.

Today, Kevin is 8 and has mainstreamed into the Pleasanton school district. His mom has a message for parents who wonder if their children are suffering from a developmental disability: trust your instinct and seek assistance from experts.

In fact, on Saturday, May 30, the School of Imagination and Child Care Links are bringing together over 50 specialists in child development, pediatrics, speech pathology, occupational therapy, audiology and psychology to offer free screening, assistance, and immediate referrals to agencies to any Bay Area parents who are concerned that their children may be suffering from autism or similar disabilities.

Called the “Happy Talkers Community Outreach Fair,” the event is the most comprehensive workshop in the history of the Bay Area addressing developmental delay and autism early intervention.

Founded in 2000 by Charlene and Mitch Sigman, Happy Talkers has served more than 3,000 children with speech delays, developmental disabilities and autism. The program provides individualized or classroom speech and occupational therapies for any student.

Charlene Sigman notes that studies by the Centers for Disease Control show autism is detectable in one out of 150 children, yet many children are not diagnosed and opportunities for early intervention are often missed. In California alone, the number of children diagnosed with autism has increased by 400 percent since 1994.

According to Sigman, early screening and diagnosis for children between 18 months and three years are critical because intervention therapies during this brief window of time can help kids achieve key developmental milestones.

“The diagnosis is the beginning,” said Kojimi. “Early intervention opens up all kinds of possibilities for the future.”

The free screenings offered on May 30 will take place between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 7625 Ridgeline Drive at the Schaefer Ranch Model Homes in Dublin, near the future site of the School of Imagination.

To register or learn more about this event, call (877) 543-7852 or visit www.schoolofimagination.org/outreach.

Lessons on the Lam

2009-05-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald and Valley Times in March 2009.

When David Lair was 16, he felt angry and misunderstood. So he ran away from home.

“I started from my house one evening in San Ramon on a bike with a flat tire,” said Lair, who is now 21 and smiled as he reminisced about the almost amusing mishaps of his three-day adventure.

Lair rode toward Pleasanton, though he didn't really know what direction he was riding. When he arrived in Dublin after 10 p.m, Lair spotted a bus and decided this would make for an easier getaway, so he rode hard to try to catch it.

“It drove off and didn’t think twice about stopping for me,” he said.

When another bus finally came along, Lair hitched a ride to Livermore, but only because the driver took pity on the boy since the bus was going out of service.

Soon a tired and hungry Lair was sitting at the corner of Jack London and Kitty Hawk in Livermore. He called his ex-girlfriend to come get him. As he waited, two friendly fellows about 19 years old came along.

They robbed him at knifepoint.

“I pulled out the $8 and odd cents I had, and proved I had nothing more by emptying my pockets,” he said.

The robbers walked away with Lair’s money and his cell phone to deter a call to the police.

Soon Lair’s ex-girlfriend (we’ll call her Betsy) picked up the boy in her dad’s Mercedes, which she took without her dad’s knowledge. “She was technically my ex-girlfriend at that moment, but she would become my girlfriend in a few days,” Lair said.

When the two got to Betsy’s house, she snuck him into her room where they looked at pictures and talked about old times. In the morning, as Lair hid in the attic, his mother called to ask if the family had seen her son.

“Betsy covered for me,” he said, “and her sister also helped my escape.”

Betsy’s sister told Lair about a garage in Livermore that housed an old car with a dead engine where he could sleep for a few days until he determined the next leg of his journey.

"My knowledge of Livermore was almost non-existent,” Lair said, “so I ended up walking for three hours in the blazing sun before I reached my destination.”

Lair slept successfully that night in the car, but woke up starving and still without money. In lieu of food, he accepted a cigarette from a friend of Betsy’s sister who knew Lair was in the garage.
An infrequent smoker, the 16-year-old Lair passed out after a few puffs and cut the top of his head as he fell to the ground.

“I must have tried to get up because on the way down for the second time, I cut open my eyebrow,” he said.

Eventually, Lair was given $20 for food, which he purchased at a gas station where he met a man of Asian decent who spoke in broken English. The man noted Lair’s condition, shared a story about being beaten up once, and offered the boy a bandaid.

Lair’s adventure then took him to a school where he blended in with students and hung out with a friend. He also made a call and managed to get back together with Betsy.

After three days, Lair had enough. He called home. “My mother picked me up within 30 minutes,” he said.

Today, Lair is content with his life and is nothing like the confused and aimless boy he was back then. “It seems we all go through rebellious periods in our adolescent life,” he said. “That experience taught me several lessons and helped shape the person I am today.”

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Pet the Goat and other cycling adventures

2009-04-28T07:30:00.001-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on April 28, 2009 and a few days later in the Valley Times.

Somewhere ahead of me a couple Saturdays ago, my cycling buddy Bryan Gillette was pedaling his bicycle toward the summit of Mt. Hamilton in 90 degree weather.
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I had dropped back.

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I knew he would finish the 206 mile Devil Mountain Double, but the question was, would I?
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I had an excuse for not keeping up. Two weeks earlier I’d run 50 miles mostly uphill along the American River from Sacramento to Auburn. My legs hadn’t fully recovered, I told myself, and the heat wasn’t helping.

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As I pedaled in pursuit of my friend and a distant finish line that would somehow accomplish something, I wondered how it is I manage to sign up for these ultra endurance events.

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After all, I'm an old guy at 52.

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And yet I’ve been running marathons for decades and going on long bikes rides since I was in high school. There’s something I enjoy in the physical and mental challenge, the often stunning views along marathon and bike routes, the absence of phones and email, the joy of having just one goal instead of the day-to-day multitasking that is my life.

Bryan Gillette (left) with me at the Mines Road aid station, approx 90 miles into the ride. Shortly after this rest stop, Bryan pulled ahead of me and I never caught up to him. Byan is an amazing cyclist, and on the day of this ride, he was feeling symptoms similar to the flu.

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Speaking of physical challenges, the Devil Mountain Double includes 20,000 feet of elevation gain. Approximately 200 riders from as far away as England signed up for this annual event that took place on April 18. The route starts in San Ramon and makes a giant circle, going up and over Mt. Diablo, over Morgan Territory Road, out to Tracy, back up Patterson Pass, out Tesla Road in Livermore to Mines Road, up to the top of Mt. Hamilton, down into San Jose and then back up into the foothills via Sierra Road, down Calaveras Road to Sunol, out Niles Canyon and up and over Palomares to Crow Canyon and Norris Canyon, and then to the finish at the San Ramon Marriott.

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Yes, it’s a long way to ride a bike in one day.

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The first place finisher, in 12 hours and 12 minutes, was Kevin Metcalf of Pleasant Hill.

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Along the route, Bryan and I were joined by fellow cyclists Steve and Jan Sherman and Jerry Pentin, who came out to ride with us for portions of the ride. Their moral support and companionship were invaluable, as was the support provided by more than 80 volunteers.

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As I rode, often alone for hour upon hour and mile after mile, I made mental notes of the various creatures I encountered. I knew I’d be spending the following day with my two teenaged daughters, and I wanted to recount for my 13-year-old the many animals I came upon.

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These included lizards, a snake, a bull in the road, horses, deer, birds, sheep, dogs, and cats.

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And then there was the goat. Our route maps showed a rest stop at mile 160 called “Pet the Goat.” I was never sure during the ride if the stop actually included a goat, let alone whether I would get to pet it.

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As I made my way up Sierra Road, as evening turned to night, I pulled into the rest stop, greeted by volunteers and a hot cup of cocoa. And there he was: the goat.

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“Welcome,” said a volunteer. “Congratulations on getting this far. You may pet the goat.”

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So I did. I petted the goat, took its picture, thanked the volunteers, mentioned that I was almost certain I wouldn’t finish the whole ride, and set off into the chilly darkness.

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Five miles later at 10 p.m., at the top of what we cyclists call the “wall” on Calaveras Road, the most wonderful woman in the world pulled up alongside me in her black Honda Pilot.

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As I climbed into the warm embrace of my wife’s car, I learned that Bryan was certain to finish the entire 206 miles, which he did 47 minutes later.

For me, 17 hours and 165 miles in one day was enough.
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Then again, maybe next year I’ll make it the whole way.

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To learn more about the Devil Mountain Double, visit http://www.quackcyclists.com/.

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American River 50

2009-04-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

The American River 50 Mile Endurance Run on April 4, 2009 took place under awesome skies and perfect weather. Vistas of the river were spectacular. I joined 600 + runners at 6 a.m. in the dark to participate for the second time in this ultramarathon. Last year I finished in 10:39. My goal this year was to beat that time. (My secret goal was to break 10 hours.) But there was one problem: I didn't train anywhere near as much leading up to the race this year. On the other hand, last year I ran the first half with my wife Pam, and we went out very cautiously since we didn't know what to expect.

My initial miles clicked by easily and at mile 18 I was feeling great. By the 26.2 mile mark--the marathon--I was on my way to beating last year's finish time. My marathon split was 4:38, compared to last year's 5:10. I was destined, or so it seemed, to beat my time last year. But remember, I didn't have the endurance miles in my legs this year, and I wasn't sure what was in store in the second half.

Beals Point at 26.77 miles is where last year I ran on ahead of Pam. This year, she met me there and became my pacer to run the second half with me. Pacers are allowed after Beals, and can even take aid at the stations. The second half of the course leaves the paved bike path and heads into rocky trail terrain. So most runners, me included, run the second half slower than the first. Since my split at Beals was 4:45, I figured I had a shot at just under 10 hours if I slowed down only 15 minutes.

As the miles came and went, we both charged the flats, powerwalked with gusto the uphills, passed a lot of people. I continued to take S-caps, eat potatoes dipped in salt, drink coke in the cups at the aid stations, eat handfuls of cheese-its, a few scoops of M&Ms, and drink broth from time to time. I carried one bottle, initially filled with water, then filled with GU20 which they had at the aid stations.

At one point crossing a stream, Pam took a spill and thought she'd sprained her wrist. She got half wet and bruised her hip. Yet she got up and charged on.

In the final 6 miles I started to fade. I really wish I had my secret weapon at that point: an Odwalla. Gels and GU20 weren't doing it, and I was feeling a little queasy. I found myself walking more, even on some flats. My hips and legs felt good (except my left knee), but I was just running out of energy. Soon I realized I wasn't going to break 10 hours.

At mile 47, I paused for a photo. By this point we had embarked on the very steep final hills. These are "in your face" and "kick your butt" miles that are relentlessly uphill. The pay off, though, is the sound of the finish line.

As I neared that final line, I thought about the depths of my own determination I had tapped during this race. I remembered, like last year, that endurance sports are as much about going deep as they are about going long.

As I crossed the line, the clock read 10:14 -- 25 minutes faster than last year.

Thanks to Pam for her support. She was a great pacer and ran an awesome 24 miles herself !

Next endurance event...the Double Mountain Devil on April 18 (206 miles on a bicycle with my buddy Bryan Gillette!)

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An immigrant speaks

2009-03-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

When Bosnian-born Izudin Huskic turned three, he watched his father disappear due to his county’s war. Then, at age 11, he woke up one morning to a face he barely remembered.

“My dad was alive,” Huskic said. “We packed and headed to the airport because my dad was taking our family to the United States of America, the land of the free.”

Huskic, who today is 19 and works as a project assistant for a civil engineering firm in Danville, reflected on his years growing up as a child who quickly learned English while his parents and older siblings grappled with America’s odd customs and foreign language.

“Adult immigrants use their children as translators,” Huskic said. “These children have many responsibilities, which can cause missed days at school and soccer games, and a missed childhood.”

Yet Huskic believes that while some immigrant kids aren’t as educated as the rest of American children, immigrant youth are more likely to succeed in life since they are given many responsibilities at a young age.

As an example, Huskic recalls going with his father to Bank of America in Oakland to open an account.

“I was twelve and had to translate the conversation in my broken English between my father and the manager of the bank,” he said. “My dad stood there as if he were deaf until I spoke in our native language.”

As the banking conversation continued, Huskic realized that he was able to understand and translate perfectly what the two men were saying to each other. Being forced that day to speak English built his confidence.

“As soon as I learned English, I started to read all the mail, pay the bills, and accompany my parents everywhere they went,” he said, adding that even when his family watched a movie he had to translate what was going on.

“In other words, I was, and still am, the mouth of the family,” Huskic said.
While Huskic currently still lives with his parents, he’s confident some day he’ll be able to move out on his own, though English is still a struggle for his parents. His father works in construction, and his mother works graveyard for FedEx.

“During the past few years I’ve given my cell phone number to banks and other firms so calls to my parents come to my phone,” he said. “Also, bills are paid every two weeks so I’m not obligated to be home all the time.”

Huskic acknowledges it often seems unfair that he’s had to take on responsibilities while other kids are free to play ball at the park. He also notes that being an immigrant child can mean years of embarrassment and putting up with the laughter of other children.

And yet Huskic chooses to focus on the positive side of what he’s had to endure these past eight years since coming to America: “I am proud to say I have learned the American way,” he said. “I now consider myself as a Bosnian-American with a bright future and a better knowledge of life than an average 19-year old.”

Danville teen stands up to odds

2009-02-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in February 2009.

Six years ago, at age 13, Tiffany Breger of Danville called her mom to come pick her up from the gymnastics class she loved so much.

“I wasn't feeling well and we didn't think anything of it,” she said, “but I never returned to gymnastics.”

Breger, who recently received the Sandia National Lab / Las Positas College Student of the Year award, said her doctors were unable to diagnose her ailment, and even a series of specialists couldn’t explain the chronic pain she was feeling.

“The first year, I was completely bedridden,” she said, “and I lost the ability to walk.”

Though Breger was homeschooled, the simple acts of reading, writing, and doing math required more stamina than her body could handle. Eventually, her doctors excused her from school permanently.

“Many times people wish to be free of work and responsibilities,” she said. “But it’s a scary feeling to have no expectations of you, no belief in any potential you have, and no hope for your future.”

Homebound for three years and feeling she’d lost everything that defined who she was, Breger saw life slipping away. So at 16 years old, she made the decision to get her life back. She entered therapy at Children’s Hospital in Oakland where she painfully and slowly regained her ability to walk.

She even became determined to earn the equivalent of a high school diploma.
“I started to re-teach myself math,” she said. “Every day I’d try to read a bit of a chapter and do some problems.”

Though the effort resulted in exhaustion, pain, and fever, Breger was persistent. She steadily built up her endurance. “Much to my surprise, I passed the high school proficiency exam in October 2005,” she said.

She didn’t stop there. Breger began interviewing primary care physicians and took charge of her case, writing down her medical history and making a list of all medications, test results, and the symptoms she’d experienced over the years. “I went in telling my doctors what I felt I needed and what steps I wanted taken.” In time, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

Then in the spring 2006, Breger signed up to take just one class at Chabot College. She wished she could take more units, but she hadn’t been in a classroom setting in years and wasn’t sure how much she could handle.

Then, after looking longingly through the college catalogue, she took a leap of faith.
“I took a full 12 units,” she said, asking for no special accommodations. “I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to know that I could keep up with everyone else.” Sure enough, Breger earned all A’s.

Soon, at the request of a fellow classmate, she joined a new environmental club being formed on campus. Though she didn't think she had the confidence to fulfill the duties, she even took on the role of secretary. “I shocked myself,” she said, referring to how she designed the club website and promotional materials, created a mailing list, and chaired events.

As Breger’s health and confidence grew, she also took classes at Las Positas College, joined the Alpha Gamma Sigma Honor society, and got involved in student government, eventually becoming student body president. She joined other associations and even volunteered in the same unit at Children’s Hospital where she had been a patient.

In fact, Breger’s brown eyes shine when she recounts an experience during a physical therapy session with a 9-year-old patient. The girl was refusing to cooperate, and wouldn’t participate in simple standing exercises.

“Her therapist couldn’t get her to listen.” Breger said. “So I told her what I went through, how frustrating it was, but how the hard work does pay off.”

At first the girl didn't respond. Then she pulled herself up on her own, and she stood.

This fall, Breger hopes to transfer from Las Positas College to U.C. Berkeley to major in psychology and public health. She eventually wants to attend Harvard to earn a doctorate in biological sciences in public health, and then work to address weaknesses in the healthcare industry.

And like her own personal story of triumph and the experience with the girl who Breger inspired to stand on her own, she wants to teach chronically ill teenagers and adults to become their own advocates: “I want people to learn how to stand up for themselves.”

Together at Christmas

2008-12-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in December 2008. A slightly shorter version also appeared in the Valley Times on Christmas Day.

When I was a youngster, Christmas meant getting on a plane with my family and flying to southern California to visit relatives where my mom and dad grew up. Picture two young parents with two little boys and a girl boarding a PSA 727 on the tarmac at San Jose Airport. The boy with the cowlick and freckled face was me.

We always spent Christmas week with my maternal grandparents in the tiny two-bedroom home in Venice where my mom grew up. My grandparents bought the house when it was brand new in the 1940s. As a boy, I thought nothing of the fact that the home had only one bathroom that seven of us shared during our visit. It also never mattered that we kids slept on the living room floor in sleeping bags, or that it always took me a few nights to get used to the ticking of an heirloom clock that sat atop my grandma’s hutch.

What mattered was that we were all together as a family.

I’m sure for my mother, who wasn’t even 20 when we began this tradition, the visit meant coming home to the warm embrace of her childhood, to her mother’s cooking, to her dad’s funny jokes.

My mom’s father was brought up on a farm in Minnesota. He held several jobs over the years, even once painting the steeple of a church that housed a tribe of angry yellow jackets. Eventually, after moving to California, he was able to pursue his dream of opening an archery shop.

While Sierra Archery sold high-end hunting gear to a number of movie stars—including a young Michael Jackson—I knew the shop as a place of mystery, where the heads of bear and deer my grandfather had killed hung high on the walls. The shop was a world of textures and smells, of feathers and leather, of paint and wood shavings. My grandfather made many of the bows and arrows himself.

Of course, one Christmas we kids got our own archery sets. I don’t remember actually using the bow much as a boy, although one time my brother and I stood in the large field behind our home in Los Gatos and shot arrows straight up into the air. This we did beyond the eyesight of my mom, because the object of this bright stunt was to move as close to the arrow as possible as it rocketed back down to earth and plunged its tip into the ground.

Anyway, Christmas morning at my grandmother’s house was everything Christmas was supposed to be. Even though we three kids slept only a few feet from the tree, Santa managed to sneak in and place our gifts under its branches without so much as a sound.

One year, when we were old enough to realize that Santa would probably appreciate milk and cookies, we were pleased to see that he always took a few bites and drank a few sips to sustain his long journey around the world. I remember once being truly amazed as I stared at the nibbled cookies that Santa had stood in this very spot.

This Christmas I will be traveling again, but not by airplane. In fact, I won’t even be leaving the city limits. As we’ve done for the past six years, my wife and I will drive the three minutes it takes to get to my former wife’s house where our two daughters will have just awakened in their upstairs rooms.

Although our girls split their time between our two homes, they always wake up Christmas morning at mom’s house. We drive over when the call comes, and once the three parents are together near the tree, the girls come downstairs to discover what Santa has brought them and to see if the reindeer have nibbled the carrots and if Santa has eaten any cookies.

Yes, even at ages 16 and 13, the girls set out goodies for Santa because they know that some traditions really matter at Christmas, like being all together as one family.

English 1A Fall 2008

2008-12-19T20:28:00.000-08:00

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English 1A Fall 2008 at Las Positas College

A great class full of wonderful students!

A call for child advocates

2008-12-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

Tara Beckman clearly remembers the first time she met Jeremiah, a 13-year-old boy who at the time lived in a group home in San Francisco.

"I always find myself smiling when I tell people about this boy," said Beckman, 32, who volunteers for a program that provides one-on-one court advocacy to abused, neglected and abandoned children. "He has an infectious smile and such endearing eyes."

Beckman recalls her first conversation with Jeremiah, which took place a year ago. He wanted to visit his little brother, Jesse, whom he hadn't seen in several months, as well as his adoptive mother who could no longer care for him.

"I was able to arrange a court-approved monthly visitation with his family," she said.

After returning to pick up Jeremiah from his first visit with his brother, Beckman said she felt "a sense of sadness" behind her. She turned to see tears streaming down little Jesse's face. He was afraid his older brother would never come back.

"I explained that Jeremiah would be coming back," she said, as the older boy went to hug his little brother.

"Bro, don't worry," Jeremiah is reported to have said, "Tara will bring me back next month."

Called CASA, which stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates, the nonprofit organization currently serves 91 of the approximately 2,300 foster children in Alameda County. Children are referred to the program by the courts, social workers and attorneys.

"We currently have 81 children on our wait list," Beckman said. "We just need more people to volunteer."

A volunteer herself for five years, Beckman is currently an advocate for three teenagers, including Jeremiah.

She recalled another visit between Jeremiah and Jesse, when she drove the boys to go hiking. On the way to the park, Jeremiah was sitting in the front seat and his brother in the back.

"When I pulled over to get the boys a cinnamon roll," she said, "Jeremiah asked if he could sit in back with his brother."

Beckman will never forget looking in her rear view mirror to see the frosting on their faces and fingers. "At that moment, the frosting on my seats didn't matter," she said. "What mattered was giving these two boys the precious gift of being together to laugh and be excited and just be brothers."

Today Beckman continues to mentor and advocate for Jeremiah, who in the last four months has lived in five different group homes. She encourages anyone interested in making a difference in the life of a child to consider CASA. Volunteers are asked to make a one-year commitment and spend 15-20 hours per month on the child's case.

To learn more about CASA, visit www.casaofalamedacounty.org. Potential volunteers may contact Di Roberts at (510) 618-1950 or email her at diroberts@acgov.org.

Thanksgiving 2008

2008-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Cousins from the Pleasanton and Atlanta Ott families and the Bodines got together with aunts and uncles and grandma for a wonderful Thanksgiving in San Francisco. These photos were taken at Baker Beach. Soon after, we played touch football (hence the jerseys) on a field in the Presidio.

Interviewing Dean Karnazes

2008-11-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

Today Kathy Cordova and I got to interview Dean Karnazes, world-famous ultra-marathon runner, on our TV show on TV30, Tri-Valley Community Television. Dean is such a nice guy, so down to earth and easy to talk to.

Thanks to Jerry Pentin for this photo.

William H. Ott

2008-11-04T18:35:00.000-08:00

Farewell, Dad.

You were the best father ever.

You touched so many lives.

You made us laugh.

You gave us hope.

You will be missed.

God bless you as you find your way into Heaven.

.
July 13, 1930 - November 2, 2008

When Magic Happens

2008-10-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

Even as a boy growing up in Oakland, Leo Luna had a passion for the stage. In 1951 when he was nine, his mother took him to see nationally-known magician Harry Blackstone, Sr. at the Paramount Theater. Luna sat transfixed among the crowd, amazed at the power the performer had over the audience.

At Castlemont High School, Luna auditioned for the school play and was thrilled to get a part--even though the role had only one line. Still, he practiced repeatedly for the performance. Then, on opening night, with hundreds of eyes upon him, Luna accidentally changed the tone and delivery of his line as he became consumed in his role.

“For a second, I thought I did something wrong,” he said.

The audience’s response was astounding. The crowd broke into applause and laughter. After the show, his teacher congratulated him on his performance.

“In that instant I knew I belonged on the stage,” he said.

Throughout high school and after graduating, Luna prepared for a career in acting. He took dance lessons and landed roles in community plays.

“Then I got a draft notice,” he said.

After four years in the army, including three in Germany, Luna came home to Oakland with greater responsibilities. Now married, with a small daughter and another baby on the way, Luna saw his dreams of acting diminish. Yet the stage quietly called to him, and one day in 1972 he read a quotation that changed his life: “A magician is an actor pretending to be a magician.”

Although he later learned the phrase was a common misquotation of magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, Luna will never forget the effect it had on him. The words ignited his interest in magic and he saw an outlet to perform after hours and evenings. He immediately dove into magic, working to perfect his craft.

Having performed in a variety of venues, Luna fondly recalls a moment in the mid-1970s when he was asked to appear at a school for hearing impaired youth. Although he was told an interpreter would be by his side as performed his usual show, he was concerned that the full effect of his magic might be lost on his audience.

Luna’s concerns eased as the youngsters responded enthusiastically to each illusion. Afterward, a teacher approached him and said that a student was asking to come forward and shake his hand. Luna agreed, and watched as a nine-year-old girl was wheeled up to him. As he took her hand, she pulled him close and, as all the students watched, gave him a hug. Suddenly all the childen came forward to greet and hug the wonderful magician.

"I’d never experienced anything like this,” said Luna, his lips quivering. “It really made me realize this was what I was supposed to be doing. It was like a stamp of approval.”

Luna, who moved his family to Pleasanton in 1976, retired a few years ago from his full-time job driving school busses. But he’s never retired from magic and has never lost the passion. These days he can be found performing at corporate events, birthday parties, daycare centers, and other gatherings.

“The audience makes it exciting and keeps it fresh,” Luna said. “As a magician I get to take them out of their everyday problems, even if it’s only for an hour. Magic really is magic.”

To experience Leo Luna’s magic, contact him at 925-846-3888 or by email at rabbitsgon@comcast.net.

EMTs breathe life into their work

2008-10-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

This column was published on September 30, 2008 in the Tri-Valley Herald

Keith Humphrey stumbled out of bed and pulled on his boots at 2:40 in the morning on a recent Saturday. His partner did the same.

“Dom is naturally a big guy, tough as titanium,” said 20-year-old Humphrey, who spoke over a cup of coffee about his experiences as an Emergency Medical Technician, or EMT. “But Dom’s a gentle giant who will always go beyond what’s asked to make a patient feel a little better.”

Humphrey, who has short blond hair and blue eyes, has been an EMT in Alameda County for two years.

What awoke Humphrey at the emergency services station where he and his partner were asleep was the radio’s sudden bark about a woman having trouble breathing at a nursing home. As Dom fired up the ambulance and drove, Humphrey did paperwork, recording the who, what, and why of the call.

“Most people feel a sudden jolt of adrenaline when faced with an emergency,” Humphrey said, “but over time on this job I’ve lost that kick. To help me wake up, I drank a Monster energy drink.”

Soon the ambulance pulled up to the nursing home. After unloading a gurney and a bag of medical equipment, Humphrey and Dom entered the lobby.

“My mind quickly ran through how to handle this call,” Humphrey said. “Few things in life are as scary as being unable to breathe.”

According to Humphrey, patients who can’t breathe often panic, which quickly uses up available air in their lungs. This can lead to respiratory failure, which can then lead to heart failure.

“It’s a snowball effect that can happen as quickly as five minutes and usually once it begins, it’s hard to stop,” he said.

Encountering a questioning nurse, the EMTs stated the patient’s name and were nodded through, the nurse holding open the door.

“In the movies, emergency medical service workers sprint to the victim,” Humphrey said, “but in real life this doesn’t happen.” Running down a hallway with heavy equipment doesn’t bring the needed calm to the chaos of an emergency, he said. In fact, arriving at the room, Humphrey found a scene far from calm.

“As soon as we walked in, I knew this was going to be a rough one,” he said. They found an 85-year-old woman gasping for breath and almost unconscious. Severe dementia kept her from answering questions and knowing where she was. Humphrey placed an oxygen mask on her face and checked her vital signs.

“The woman’s low blood pressure and high heart rate screamed heart failure to me,” he said. “Her heart was trying to get oxygen-enriched blood to her body. She was minutes away from full cardiac arrest.”

Humphrey recalls looking into the eyes of this tiny woman who probably only weighed one hundred pounds. “I saw a lost and frightened soul,” he said.

Then, as she was loaded into the ambulance, Humphrey made a critical discovery as he listened to her lungs with his stethoscope. “I heard what sounded like a washing machine in her chest. This lady’s lungs were full of water,” he said. In other words, she was drowning internally.

After a full lights and siren race to the emergency room, the partners wheeled their patient through the automatic doors. “I looked around for someone to talk to, but everyone was busy at their computer screens,” Humphrey said.

In a few moments—which seemed much longer to Humphrey—a nurse said she would be with them in a few minutes.

“I boiled inside,” Humphrey said as he quickly told the nurse, “No, you don’t get it. She has fluid in her lungs and respiratory failure.” This got the nurse’s attention. As doctors converged on the patient, the two EMTs quietly slipped out.

Later the same evening, a routine call brought Humphrey and Dom to the same emergency room. The fragile woman was sleeping peacefully in the bed where they'd left her.

“The nurse noticed me looking at her,” said Humphrey, “and asked if I'd brought her in.” Not looking away from the sleeping woman, Humphrey nodded. The nurse told him the woman was lucky the nursing home called when it did. Another half hour and she wouldn’t have made it. “You get the save for that one,” she told Humphrey.

“I smiled because that was both true and false,” he said, staring into his now tepid coffee. “I didn’t push the drugs that flushed her lungs clear. I didn’t take the chest x-ray. I didn’t start the IV line. All I did was recognize her emergency and get her to the hospital as fast as we could.”

Humphrey said EMTs are just one link in a chain that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t when it comes to saving lives. As far back as he can remember he admired emergency service professionals. In one of his favorite photos as a little boy he wears a helmet and a firefighter jacket his grandmother made for him.

“Although most days are routine, I love getting up in the morning to go to work,” he said. “It’s an honor being there when people need us most.”

Unemployed, but hopeful

2008-10-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

She’s a 41-year-old single mother with 7-year-old twin boys, and she’s been unemployed for nearly four months.

While she fondly remembers growing up in a safe and stable neighborhood in the Oakland Hills near Knowland Park, today she lives in the Tri-Valley.

“I chose to move here four years ago because I found a nice town home under $1,000 a month to rent,” she said, asking that her name not be published. “I like it here because it’s safe and the schools are better.”

Though she earns some money working a few hours a week for her uncle, a tax accountant, she’s hasn’t found a full-time job after nearly four months of looking, even with the help of a local employment agency. Her last job was with the Contra Costa County Department of Employment and Human Services.

“I’ve never gone this long without finding a job,” she said.

To make matters worse, she’s having trouble sorting out whether she can draw unemployment.

“The state agency that pays unemployment wants state disability to pay and they want unemployment to pay,” she said. “Meanwhile, I had to apply for an appeal and go on aid just so we can make rent.”

In addition to job hunting, she makes productive use of her time by taking classes to improve her education and work skills.

Sadly, some people in her community don’t seem to respect her right to live where she chooses.

“I’m embarrassed when people find out we’re struggling to make ends meet,” she said. “Living in an upper class town has it pros and cons.” The pros are obvious, such as good schools, safer neighborhoods, clean streets, and parks. But the downside is what she calls “quiet racism and being stereotyped, which I hate with a passion,” she said, referring to the fact that she is African-American. Both happen most often at her boys’ school.

“Some parents who know I’m on welfare stare at me with malice that loudly says ‘we do not want your kind here.’”

Surprisingly, she even finds some resistance where she worships on Sundays.

“While many people in my church are supportive and friendly, I receive the same judgmental stares from some because they know I’m divorced,” she said. “I just struggle with the few who are doing this to my children and me.”

She says if people would just engage her in a friendly conversation, they would discover she’s a good person.

“I still smile and wish them a good day because in some ways I can’t worry about their opinions,” she said. “I especially want church to be a safe place for my boys, where they are judged only by their character.”

Speaking of her boys, one of her greatest challenges is shopping with her twins. On a recent excursion for basic supplies, she had to contend with her sons’ relentless requests for an item that caught their attention: a T-shirt that comes with a toy.

“My boys begged me with their big puppy dog eyes for the shirt, but I just couldn’t afford it,” she said. “I hate having to break their little hearts, especially since they’ve been so good at conserving things such as food, toothpaste and soap. I hate moments like these.”

She says the most difficult part of being unemployed is when she’s around family and friends who have jobs and don’t realize how fortunate they are. “They complain about their pay and how they’re one paycheck from the street,” she said. “But their bills are paid and they have food and new clothing.”

Yet in spite of the adversity, this woman, who speaks confidently with hope and a ready smile, has words of encouragement for her young boys, and perhaps for herself: “I tell them I know it’s difficult being poor, but when mommy lands another job and pays a few bills current, I promise them we’ll have a special shopping day to make up for what we missed.”

Running from childhood terrors

2008-09-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on September 25, 2008. The young woman I interviewed is a student in my English class. Her story touched my heart.

In July 1975, her new baby sister arrived, she said, “in the guise of a chubby cherub wrapped in a pink fuzzy blanket.”

Eyes peeking out, round as the July moon, the new baby stole all the attention from the two-year-old sister.

“I’d become invisible even to my favorite aunt,” said the 30-something woman who lives in the Tri-Valley and who asked that her name not be published. “And this aunt usually hugged and kissed me and twirled me around in her arms each time she came to visit.”

As time passed, she grew to love her little sister, playing together from dawn to dusk in a home full of sweet aromas, of herbs, garlic, onion, and tomato sauce. A blend of music and languages made up the background of their childhood—French, Spanish, Croatian, German, and sometimes even English, though English was never spoken in a complete sentence.

“It was fine with us,” she said, “because my little sister and I had our own language.”

But among today’s memories lurk dark recollections of sexual abuse.

“We’d take refuge under our bunk beds, hand in hand, our hearts pounding as our father walked past with his dirty black steel-toed boots looking for us,” she said. “Either one of us would do if he found us.”

Another memory is of palms-up punishment, red welts rising from sticks whipped across hands for slamming the back screen door or running in the house or other small infractions.
“If a tear was shed, we’d get double,” she said.

What haunts her most is the memory of the nightly ritual when her little sister would scramble up the side of the bunk bed to join her. Together they would wait for the sound of keys in the front door, then the opening and closing of the refrigerator door and the cracking of beer cans one after another.

“Five, six, seven,” she said, “as we held our breath.”

Next came staggering feet and wicked laughs echoing down the hallway outside of their room. On cue, they would plunge into the safety of blankets, plugging ears so hard it hurt, plugging and unplugging for hours, checking for the sound of soft whimpering of their mother from the bathroom.

Then snores from the living room would signal the terror that night was over.

“In the morning we’d run to check on our mother,” she said. “We often found her in the kitchen washing a single dish over and over, staring out the window as if in a trance.”

Daylight brought playtime in the park, being kids again, a mother in dark glasses, swings flying up and away from the night before.

“One night, when I was about 10, I decided I wasn’t going to allow this any longer,” she said. “My father was chasing my mother through the house with a gun.”

From a crack in her bedroom door, she watched, and then warned her sister to hide in the bed as she ran to the kitchen for a knife.

“I draped myself over my mother, who had fallen and was crying,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to do next, but as he sneered at us, something snapped.”

Her anger came to a boil and wielding the knife a voice emerged she hadn’t known she possessed.

“If you’re going to kill her, you’re going to have to kill me first.”

She doesn’t remember what happened next, but she does faintly remember her father locked in the basement, and paper bags of possessions being quickly loaded into a station wagon. She remembers her mother driving them to her aunt’s house, where little girls didn’t have to plug ears, where the anticipated nighttime sounds now were crickets and frogs.

“Many people have looked at me in shock when I say I wish I’d never had a father,” she said. Yet today, assisted with therapy, she strives to replace the devastation of her childhood with positive thoughts. In fact, she occasionally speaks with her father, a man whom she has come to realize was no doubt abused himself as a boy. Growing up in a foreign country, he’d married and brought her mother to the United States to run away from his own childhood terrors, to purse a dream that became a nightmare for a mother, two innocent girls, and for a lonely man still struggling for a better life in America.
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Trainer is a saving grace for horses

2008-09-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on September 16, 2008.

When Lucinda Romero was little, she lived with her mother and two sisters in Idaho with no electricity or running water 20 miles from the nearest town. They shopped for clothing only once a year, just before the start of school. For firewood and fences, they cut down trees on their property.
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But as tough as it was growing up poor, some of this rural childhood brought pleasure. “We always had horses,” said Romero, 31, who trains horses and lives in Livermore. “I’ve loved horses, probably since before I was born, and can’t remember a moment when I wouldn’t think about them, even to this day.”

This love Romero inherited from her mother, who trained horses and dogs to make ends meet, and then began raising Tennessee Walking Horses after she remarried when Romero was eight.

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“My dad brought new bloodlines to the breeding program and a new style of training,” said Romero. “We had a blend of horses. My mom’s eye for the old style, strong, sure-footed, strait legs, and good overall conformation blended well with my dad’s eye for what’s flashy in today’s show ring.”
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Together, Romero’s parents produced several outstanding horses with natural talent, and trained them for show using legitimate methods that develop muscle strength to perform at a high level, just like a human athlete.
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Such methods contrast with illegal shortcut training techniques that many horse trainers used in the 1980s and are occasionally seen today. Called “soring,” trainers use chemicals such as mustard oil, diesel fuel, or kerosene to burn a horse's front legs around its hooves. This causes the horse to quickly lift its legs as it steps, creating an accentuated gait or prance.
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Because soring is illegal, trainers hide the burns and scarring by using dye or kicking dirt onto the horses’ legs before entering the show ring.
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Growing up, Romero witnessed soring and saw its damaging effects. Even a few years ago at a show she came upon “a beautiful Palomino stallion with his mane hanging nearly to the ground,” she said. The horse stood back in a stall as still as a rock. While most horses come forward to be petted, Romero said this one stood frozen, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed.
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“You can’t understand the look until you see it,” she said. “It’s like an empty shell that looks like a horse from the outside, but when you look deeper, it’s a lost soul.”
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Romero hadn’t intended on becoming a horse trainer. Even with her love of horses, she watched her parents work many long hours on their ranch. So when she turned 21, she bought a one-way plane ticket to California and started a new life. “I wanted to wear a suit to work, live in the big city, have a fancy car, and wear nice shoes,” she said. “Remember, I only got one pair of shoes each year. Imagine cleaning horse corrals and then wearing the same shoes to school the next day.”
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But she missed the horses terribly, and after a couple of years she bought a black colt from her parents. Then, a few years later, she learned about a 2-year old Tennessee Walker for sale in Kentucky.
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“I bought the horse for just $1,500,” she said, explaining that the mare—who comes from a bloodline in which one stallion sold for one million dollars—had gone lame from soring. The people who owned the horse, whom Romero named Gracie, simply want to get rid of her.
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“When I purchased Gracie and saw how much damage had been done to her, that’s when my crusade began,” she said.
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Romero rehabilitated Gracie over the next year and began showing her. “We did well at our first show and were crowned Champion Mare at Halter and Grand Champion Halter horse,” she said.
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Then one day Romero was at the stable and gave a little girl a few tips about riding. Soon, she found herself spending more time training riders and horses, and in 2005 she opened Symmetry Stables, located in north Livermore at the Cayetano Ridge Equestrian Center on Dagnino Road.
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“That was three years ago,” said Romero, whose blue eyes brighten as she reflects on her life. Her training program “takes a lot of time to build muscle and strength, physically and mentally,” she said, “but the horses are happy in their jobs and competitive in the show ring.”
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Romero and her clients enter their horses in shows in northern California. They still encounter sored horses, but are seeing fewer. Still, Romero hopes that one day no horse will be mistreated.

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“I guess you could say I’ve gone back to my roots,” she said. “Even though I swore I wouldn’t train horses for a living, I still ended up here. My parents were believers in leading by example, and now I’m doing exactly that. I’m content to live this life and make the world a better place.”
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To see pictures of Gracie and Romero, visit www.symmetrystables.com. Romero invites visitors to come and meet Gracie at the stables, who will come forward to be greeted.

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Writing so bad it's good

2008-08-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on August 26, 2008.

Picture a younger me walking down the hall of the English department at San Jose State University back in the late 1970s. Imagine me stopping to look at the office door of one of my English professors, Dr. Scott Rice, who had taped up a cartoon of Snoopy on top of his doghouse typing: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Little did I know as I read the cartoon that Dr. Rice would soon hatch the idea for the now world-famous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which invites entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The contest takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-70), who penned the famous “dark and stormy” line.

Because Rice was one of my favorite professors in college, I’m always pleased by how many people have heard of the contest. I entered once, but I'm not expert enough to write an award-winning bad sentence. Chances of winning are slim anyway, since entries can be as high as 10,000 for the annual contest.

This year’s winner, recently announced by Rice, did write a pretty darned good bad sentence. Written by Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer from Washington, D.C., the winning sentence reads:
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“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

Wow that’s bad. I mean good.

So why would Rice encourage us to consciously write really awful sentences? Besides being fun, writing poorly in a masterful way requires knowledge of good writing. So the contest teaches us how to write well even as we try to write poorly.

I’ve been thinking about Rice lately and realized I haven’t spoken to him in decades. So I found his email address and sent him a message that began: “No doubt you’ll need to brush off the dusty memories of the late 1970s to recall me, but I was a graduate student of yours way back when.”

A few days later, I got a reply: “I remember you well. You were the guy whose dad made him write essays and then corrected them.”

And so began a conversation in which I learned that these days Rice teaches just two classes a semester and enjoys playing golf. The contest, of course, is a significant part of his life. “I don't run the contest,” he said, “it runs me. I will keep doing it as long as enough people are interested.”

Rice said he gets sentences submitted every day. “The contest takes more work than many will be willing to do,” he said. “I am working on it almost on a daily basis.”

Rice also said that in the 26 years since he came up with the idea, he hasn’t tried to improve the contest, which is judged by former winners who often disagree over which sentences should be winners. “I am a charter member of the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it club,” he said. “I ignore all suggestions for how I might make the contest bigger or flashier.”

When Rice was my professor, he’d been teaching at San Jose State for just over 10 years. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went to school in Spokane, spending his summers on his great-grandparents’ dairy farm in Clarkston, Washington. After high school, he spent a year working at a lumber mill in Idaho.

Rice became interested in teaching English during his freshman year of college at Lewis-Clark Normal School in Idaho. “I had a Humanities course from a charismatic teacher named Wayne Sims,” he said. “Listening to his enthralling lectures and working my way through the old Warnock and Anderson ‘The World in Literature,’ I realized that I wanted to become an English professor.”

Rice also credits a second teacher, John Sisk, with inspiring him at Gonzaga University in Spokane. “Sitting in awe listening to his lectures, it seemed to me he had read everything,” he said. “After I had spent some time in graduate school, I realized that he had.”

Rice earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona, and fortunately for me, he found his way to San Jose State right out of graduate school in 1968. In the same way that Rice enjoyed the talks of his professors, I was captivated by his lectures. I took several courses from him. I’ll never forget his Rhetoric class. I still have the textbook handy in my office. I learned about persuasive arguments, diction, style, and sentence composition. Much of what I learned in that class taught me how to write.

My other memories of Rice include his sense of humor, his beard, and his style of teaching, a style I borrow and honor even to this day in my own English classes at Las Positas College.

For more about the Bulwer-Lytton writing contest, visit www.bulwer-lytton.com.

Retired scientist recalls life as boy in Brooklyn

2008-08-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on August 5, 2008 and in the Valley Times a few days later.

Albert Rothman still has a faint indentation on his right index knuckle from when a picket fence tore open his thumb during a skirmish when he was four years old. He’d called a neighbor boy fat and took a beating for it.

“I’d developed a taste for danger,” said Rothman, 84, of Livermore.

Born in 1924 during the Coolidge administration, Rothman grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His parents moved many times, so the young Albert often felt isolated as he moved from one public school to the next.

At one point, though, his parents settled down long enough to own a store. “The place had rats,” said Rothman, who remembers watching a large rat behind the counter in a corner while a customer was in the store. “My folks calmly helped the customer, then as soon as the door closed, they chased away the rat.”

When it came time to sell the store, relatives pretended to be customers when prospective buyers visited. “They wanted it to look like business was booming,” he said.

Rothman, who retired in 1986 from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, earned his doctorate in chemistry and chemical engineering from the U.C. Berkeley in 1954. He has lived in the Bay Area since 1948.

But it’s his childhood that prompted him to write his memoir: “A Brooklyn Odyssey—Travails and Joys of a Boy’s Early Life.” The book portrays a young Jewish boy during the Great Depression on his journey toward adulthood.

One passage describes two gifts Rothman received from his Aunt Sina, gifts that became the catalyst for his career in science. “She gave me a microscope and a chemistry set,” he said. “I spent hours inspecting tiny things, especially wiggly protozoans from nearby ponds.”

Rothman’s aunts and uncles had wonderful personalities that populate his memoir. His British-born uncle Moe, for example, was a successful businessman and the only Republican in the family. “We all adored Roosevelt,” Rothman said, “but not Uncle Moe. He wasn’t shy about his hatred for our president.”

Moe had a great sense of humor: “He was completely bald, and I remember him calling out to my Aunt Sina to come quick and get him a toothpick,” Rothman said. “She asked ‘what’s the matter, what’s the matter?’ and he said ‘I need to comb my hair.’”

Another uncle, Sam, had entered the United States illegally from Russia as a stowaway. “He never applied for citizenship,” Rothman said, “although he did pay into Social Security.”

When Sam reached 65, he got a Social Security check for $600. He returned it because he didn’t believe a non-citizen deserved the money. “They sent that check back to him twice,” Rothman said, “and twice he returned it.” After the third time, Sam gave up and distributed the money to his children. “Sam had admirable integrity,” he said.

Other episodes in the memoir include tasting Coca Cola for the first time at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, attending a workshop with baseball legend Lou Gehrig, and being invited to a Benny Goodman concert where Rothman encountered a young Peggy Lee.

Today, Rothman still embraces life with a youthful sense of wonder. He loves nature and frequently hikes alone. A safety patrol volunteer with the East Bay Regional Park District, Rothman has hiked in Northern California, Washington State, Utah, Canada, and other locations. In fact, in1987 he made a solo ten-week journey in his truck-camper and hiked every day in every national park from Nebraska to the west coast.

A survivor of both non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a heart attack, Rothman stays fit through his hiking and a healthy diet. He enjoys classical music and, by his own admission, tries to read too many books.

His memoir is the latest work in a long line of writings. He has published and won prizes for his poetry, short stories, and essays in a number of venues, including the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest, The Poets' Edge Magazine, Northwoods Journal, Dan River Anthology, Bristol Banner Books Awards, and the Las Positas College Anthology.

Rothman is contemplating writing a travel memoir about his hiking trips. But in the meantime, Wingspan Press has published “A Brooklyn Odyssey.” Readers are encouraged to pick up a copy by visiting www.wingspanpress.com.

Big sister sees big picture

2008-07-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on July 22, 2008.

Sabrina Chaco of Livermore was 8 years old when one day after school her parents had something to tell her that would change her life forever.

“My mom actually put me on her lap,” wrote Chaco, now 12, in a recent school essay, “and told me that she and my dad loved me so much and that they were sad they couldn’t give me a baby brother for Christmas like I had asked a few years ago.”

Her mother went on to say they were thinking about adopting two sisters, ages 2 and 4, from a foster home. The little girls were wards of the state.

They also happened to be Chaco’s cousins, her father’s sister’s children.

“Wondrous thoughts bounced around in my head,” Chaco wrote. “Would they like me? Would they share the same room as me? Are they friendly? What if they think I’m mean? Could they be mean?”
Chaco’s parents wanted her to be part of the decision about whether to adopt. “I had to think it through,” she wrote, adding that saying no would mean wondering her whole life about what could have been, while saying yes could cause regret. After all, though she had an older half-sister named Tasheena, Chaco was living like an only child since Tasheena had her own place and Chaco usually got whatever she wanted.

“But just looking at how happy my parents were, and seeing those wide smiles on their faces and how much this meant to them was what convinced me the most,” she wrote.

Chaco gave her mom a big hug and kiss and said in a cheerful voice, “Of course! It’s totally fine with me.”

Soon the family was driving down every three weeks to Southern California to visit the sisters in their foster home. This went on for six months and included visits with the girls’ social workers, court-appointed attorneys, and counselors.

After a hearing in which the rights of the girls’ biological parents were abolished, a judge allowed the girls to move in with their new family in November 2004. Within a month the little girls started referring to Chaco’s parents as mommy and daddy.

Still, this was only the beginning of the adoption process.

“We were answerable to the state,” said Rose Chaco, Sabrina’s mother. Over the course of the two-year adoption process, the Chacos were visited twice by court-appointed attorneys and every month by various social workers.

“Not only were we subject to questioning,” said Rose, “but our home had to meet state standards and was subject to inspection.” State workers checked sleeping accommodations, fire extinguishers, child safety latches, even the temperature of the water heater.

“We were exhausted, but we never gave up,” Rose said. “My husband and I felt like we were living under a microscope, but we understood the need for such procedures.”

Sabrina Chaco recalls enjoying the process of picking new names for the girls: “My mother and father wanted all of our names to start with an S and end with an A since my name was Sabrina. We ended up giving them really long names.”

Chaco’s youngest new sister, Aaliyah, became Samantha Aaliyah Flisco Chaco. Her other new sister, Kylani, became Sophia Kylani Flisco Chaco.

In November 2006, thanks primarily to a mother’s willingness to open her heart to two little girls whose troubled early years will likely complicate the years to come, the adoption became final. For many people, such a choice would mean too many sacrifices.

But not for Sabrina’s mom.

Born in Florida, Rose Chaco moved at an early age to Guam where she grew up and lived for 21 years. “My father was in the Navy,” she said. “When my parents divorced, my brother and I lived with my mother, while my father continued his Navy career.”

After graduating from college with a degree in psychology, Rose’s love of children led her to become a caseworker for a privately funded shelter for troubled youth. “Most of my cases involved children who were physically and sexually abused,” she said. “It was an emotionally demanding job.”

While Guam is a beautiful place, Rose said tough economic times prompted her to return to the United States with her husband and daughter in June 2000. Among her various possessions, she brought along from Guam her compassion for children in need.

“I love all my children,” she said. “In my eyes, I have always had four daughters, and while we may not be the typical family, we are still a family.”

And as for Sabrina Chaco, she has no regrets: “I often look back and wonder what my life would’ve been like if I said that it wasn’t okay with me,” she wrote. “But every time I think about it, I am more convinced I made the right choice. I can’t imagine my life without my sisters.”

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To fish or not to fish

2008-07-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in July 2008.

As I type these words on a laptop, I’m sitting on a sofa in a cabin in the small resort town of Twain Harte, California. It’s early morning and my two daughters are still asleep. My wife is next to me reading. Coffee is brewing in the kitchen.

As you read this, Fourth of July has come and gone and I've returned home, but as I write this, I’m still here in the mountains hoping to capture for you the scent of pine, the clear sky, the sounds of pingpong and swimming and a rushing stream.
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We’ve been coming up to Twain Harte for many years. Located north of Sonora, the town is named after Mark Twain and Bret Harte, who spent time in these parts. This is Gold Rush country, and the small mining town of Columbia, now preserved as a state historic park, is just a stone’s throw from here.

Each summer we rent a cabin and we’re always pleased to see people up here from back home. Across the street is a cabin owned by Art and Christine Hein, who were here for a few days and took in the Fourth of July parade.

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And just a few strides down the road are cabins owned by the Hart family. These are the grown children of Thomas Hart, for whom the middle school in Pleasanton is named. In fact, another family of educators, the Sweeneys, are here for a reunion with the Harts. Neil Sweeney, the first principal of Foothill High School who still lives in Pleasanton with his wife Bev, introduced Thomas Hart to this resort town back in 1971. In all, more than 50 Harts and Sweeneys of all ages gathered for an old-fashioned barbeque on Independence Day.

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Summers in Twain Harte often provide my family with some type of life lesson. Two years ago we were all reminded how precious life is when I was violently swept downriver from my family on a rafting trip. This year’s lesson occurred at a trout farm.

I heard about the trout farm from Don Cooper of Livermore, who spent many childhood summers in this area. I knew instantly we’d visit because my 12-year-old daughter, Kelsey, loves to fish, though she’d only ever caught two fish in her life.

Before I go on you need to know that Kelsey loves all creatures, and hates to see animals in pain. Like many kids her age, she’s been shaped by the threat of global warming and the impending extinction of species, so she doesn’t even like it when I snatch snails from flowers in our yard.

How she justifies the thrill of catching a fish is with the knowledge that she can release the slippery little being back into its habitat.

So as we arrived at the shady farm of streams and a pond brimming with trout, we were confronted with a sign that read, “No catch and release.” And so began the dilemma.

We understood that the farm’s proprietor needs to earn a living. He charges no entry fee, but instead charges for each fish caught, which he cleans and packs in ice. To catch and release is akin to, say, buying a book, quickly reading it, then returning it with no profit to the bookstore.

So Kelsey had to make a decision: to fish or not to fish.

Melissa, my 16-year-old who brought along a book instead of fishing gear, offered her sister the reassuring perspective that as humans, we’re part of the food chain. “When we eat chicken, someone has to kill the chicken,” she said.

Still, the thought of personally killing a fish gave Kelsey pause. We didn’t need the fish to survive. And yet the thrill of the hunt called out to her prehistoric inner cave warrior. Here she was, fishing rod in hand, trout visible just yards away.

On her second cast, she hooked a mighty rainbow trout that fought the line like a scene from “The Old Man and the Sea.” Then, not unlike Santiago after he caught the marlin in the Hemingway tale, Kelsey regretted her action as we slipped the gasping fish into a bucket.

And yet the challenge of line against muscle lured her to cast yet again into the teaming multitude of fish. And soon adrenaline ricocheted through her veins as another trout complied with the ancient ritual we call fishing.

This time, though, she stopped. Two fish—one now dead and one nearly so—were enough.

As the souls of the two trout edged silently toward heaven, I knew I’d never forget the look in Kelsey’s eyes as she grew a little older that day, as we ended another chapter of memories in the quiet pines of these mountains.

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Babies at work? You bet!

2008-07-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on July 1, 2008

Last year when Wendy and Tommy Zanotelli became the proud parents of a baby boy they named Christian, they knew that soon their son would tag along with mom to work.

“My employer encourages moms and dads to bring their babies to work,” said Wendy Zanotelli. “We’re very fortunate.”

Ironically, Zanotelli, chief operating officer of UNCLE Credit Union, had her doubts about the program when it was first proposed in 2002 by an accounting manager who was expecting.

"At that time, I just couldn't fathom how having babies in the office could possibly work,” said Zanotelli, “especially with our staff on the teller line.”

Nonetheless, a few months later in 2003, the program was launched. “Now I’m one of the biggest supporters,” Zanotelli said.

Titled “Babies in the Workplace,” the program allows employees to bring their infants to work with the written release of a doctor. This benefits both the employer and the employees, and allows the babies to be with their parent instead of a daycare provider.

“As employees, we’re more likely to come back to work sooner,” said Angela Hewey, who has had two babies in the program and is expecting her third. “This benefits our company because we don’t have to hire and train temporary help,” she said.

Zanotelli said employee productivity hasn’t been a problem because while an employee with a baby may not be quite as productive as usual, a new parent who worries about a child in daycare isn't necessarily productive anyway if he or she is constantly calling to check on the baby.

“In my experience, the parents are even more diligent to make up for the time when they are caring for their child,” Zanotelli said.

An unexpected benefit of the program has been the morale boost and sense of family that comes with having a baby around.

“Our employees love the babies and pitch in to care for them,” said Rose Chaco, another executive at the firm. Chaco said the babies encourage employees to get to know one another on a more personal level as they talk about their children and families.

Chaco is proud to point out that in 2003 the credit union won a Family-Friendly Employer Award from Child Care Links, a local agency that serves as an advocate for quality childcare.

Even customers enjoy the babies. The typical customer response is summed up in this email excerpt: “Thank you for being sensitive to the needs of new mothers and their babies. It must be wonderful for both mother and baby to be together during the day. And I suspect saving the cost of infant childcare will gain you some valuable employee loyalty.”

Of course, mothers aren’t the only ones who bring their babies to work. Four fathers have participated, and one dad had two boys come through the program.

In all, 19 babies have participated. (The firm employs about 80 people.) Looking ahead, eight employees are currently expecting, and most plan to bring their babies to work.

"This will be the most babies we've ever had at a given time,” said Zanotelli, who notes that babies are welcome on site until they reach the age of eight months or begin to crawl, whichever comes first.

“After they leave us, we really miss them,” she said.

While a handful of firms have contacted the credit union about this unique program, including a company from Australia, Zanotelli hopes to get the word out to more employers and encourages them to explore this family-friendly benefit. She invites inquiries at wzanotelli@unclecu.org.

Tiny boy changes world

2008-06-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on June 24, 2008.

Aimee Hensley’s eyes are brown and her smile is contagious. She works in Livermore and lives in Manteca. She’s married to David. Adapted from her blog, this is her story about a boy who made a difference in the world:

Dameron Hospital, Stockton, Nov. 1, 2007: “Now at only 24 weeks, I was finding myself pushing. My water broke and nearly flooded the doctor and her staff. They induced contractions and 20 minutes later William David Hensley was born. He was tiny at 1 pound 8 ounces and only 12 inches long, but he was hanging in there. It was such an emotional roller coaster to see how tiny this little baby was, and how much he was fighting to live.”
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Nov. 3: “Will is now a little over 55 hours old and still fighting. The doctor was worried about his kidneys, but he is showing signs of improvement. He does not enjoy having his diaper changed because this morning his heart stopped three different times. This afternoon the doctor decreased his blood pressure medication, which is great. And his kidneys are continuing to improve. We are trying to remain optimistic, because he deserves a good chance at life.”
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Nov. 5: “Will had a brain ultrasound today and no bleeding was found. His skin is translucent, so we can see underneath the skin. During his blood transfusion yesterday you could actually see the blood flowing through his veins. At this point, we could not ask for better results. To see him making such strides is really a miracle right before our eyes.”
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Nov. 7: “Will is still proving to be fighter. I was able to visit for quite some time this afternoon, even during his assessment. But he did fine and I am glad I stayed because I got to hold his hand. Though Will is stable, we have a long road ahead of us. Please continue your thoughts and prayers; he needs them now to stay strong and defy the odds.”
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Nov. 8: “I always have anxiety driving to the hospital and going up to the 3rd floor, but once I see how peaceful he is, I feel much better. When parents talk about the overwhelming love they feel for their children, I always wondered how that felt. Now I know how that feels.”
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Nov. 9: “Will is breathing well today and is starting to move around quite a bit. This shows he is not suffering from pain, but we also don’t want him to use up all his energy showing off his new dance moves. Each day is a new day and we are so thankful for him. He is now just over eight days old and fighting strong with a WILL to live!”
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Nov. 12: “Today was the best day yet! I was able to hold the little man for an entire hour.”
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Nov. 14: “They stopped his feedings due to residue in his tummy. His blood sugar has been high, so they are giving him insulin. His oxygen has been low, so they increased the oxygen on his ventilator. His blood pressure has been low, so he is back on Dopamine. And yesterday they gave him a second dose of Curosurf that helps when he is in respiratory distress. All of this sounds overwhelming, and it is. But everything happening is expected with a micro preemie. What really matters is how he handles the treatment.”
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Nov. 15: “The little man is starting to open his eyes. They won't do a vision test until December, but he responds to our voices, so I know he is aware of our presence, even if at this point he cannot see us.”
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Nov. 20: “Will continues to love to lie on his tummy. We are consistently seeing a ‘poopie’ diaper! I know this sounds gross, but as tiny as he is, pooping on his own is great news.”
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Thanksgiving: “We have so much to be thankful for. Last night our nurse was wiping his mouth and Will started sucking on her finger. She let me place my pinky into his mouth to feel his sucking.”
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Nov. 23: “Kangaroo Care is an essential part of Will's recovery. It’s where Will is placed directly onto my chest for skin-to-skin contact and so he can sense my heartbeat. This immediately benefited his oxygen level, blood pressure and heart rate. Dads also can hold their baby and bond with Kangaroo Care.”
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Nov. 30: “This morning the nurse noticed blood in his stool. They stopped his feedings and ordered an x-ray. One thing they are trying to avoid is infection of the intestines, called necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC. In addition this afternoon Will starting looking pale, so they ordered a blood transfusion and tests. For the majority of the day his oxygen was good until about 5 p.m. when his oxygen dropped lower than I have ever seen it before.”
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Late evening, Nov. 30: “I am so extremely sad to post that this evening our precious little Will passed away. He gave us and many family and friends a wonderful month. Even though many of you did not meet him personally, you touched his heart. His passing came so quickly that no one was prepared. In the end, NEC took its toll more aggressively than anyone could have ever imagined.”
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Today, six months after Will’s passing, Aimee Hensley thinks about her baby every day: “We were with Will for each of the 30 days of his lifetime,” she said, her brown eyes welling with tears. “He was our little boy, and because he lived he’s changed the world for other premature babies who follow him at Dameron Hospital.”
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Until Will came along, the medical staff didn’t use Kangaroo Care as a treatment. One nurse insisted it be tried, and Will’s positive responses to being placed on his mother’s chest impressed the doctors. Now every nurse is trained in the technique.
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What a wonderful legacy for a 12-inch boy who even today is touching the lives of other babies on their embattled road to survival.

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Father's Day 2008

2008-06-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

Published in the Tri-Valley Herald June 17, 2008

For Father’s Day we drove down to Los Gatos to hang out with my dad and mom. My parents are in their mid-seventies and just celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. They met as teens in southern California, but they’ve lived most of their lives in the same house in Los Gatos, built in 1914, where we moved when I was in third grade.

My dad enjoys our visits, and especially likes to goof around with his grandkids. He’s been overheard asking my daughters such questions as “Did they suck your brains out at school?”

In fact, he’s known in the family for funny and odd phrases repeated over the years. Two summers ago my mom typed up every repetitive expression we could think of that my dad has uttered. She then surprised him with a book for his birthday dedicated “to all who have heard Bill’s words and remembered them over the years.”

My mom gathered the expressions through email. For several weeks my brother, sister, and I emailed my mom with memories as she secretly recorded each phrase. "How could we forget ‘Cool at the motor pool,’” my brother emailed. “Or ‘Thank you very little,’” my sister recalled.

The book is 14 pages, categorized into sayings, rules, advice, songs, and behaviors. Two of his rules, for example, are “Park away from other cars” and “Get rid of old magazines.”

His advice runs the gamut from “Never say no when you can say yes” to “Don’t buy it unless you need it, then don’t buy it.”

A Depression-era baby, my dad was born in 1930 in Buffalo, New York. His mother died when he was three, and his father worked in a steel mill. After high school, my dad enlisted with his twin brother in the Air Force and then went to college. He became a History and English teacher, and later a guidance counselor at a community college.

No doubt his career informed his perspective about education, whose purpose, as my mom quotes in the book, “is to teach people to think critically so they can make considered decisions that affect their lives.”

Yet in spite of the occasional erudite pronouncements, my dad’s phrases are mostly humorous, such as: “I think I slipped a disk in my brain” and, holding up a fist, “How’s about a knuckle sandwich?”

As I thumb through the hand-crafted book today, stories well up around certain phrases, such as one that simply reads: “The tree’s a-fallin!’”

This expression came from a stormy night in 1971 when rains and torrential winds threatened the grand old sycamore that grew between our house and the house next door. The winds were so strong that the tree was bumping into both homes.

As legend has it, our neighbor, Mr. Cunningham, rose in the middle of the night to pull on his rain boots and heavy coat and hat to come over to our front door with his dire news about the faltering tree. Picture if you will Mr. Cunningham with a wild look in his eyes and his hair all sticking up and crazy. (I know I just said he was wearing a hat, but childhood memories are like that and besides, I slept through the whole thing.) He bangs on our door, and as my mother and father stumble half asleep to answer, Mr. Cunningham, like some character in a gothic novel, cries out--as if something could be done about it--“The tree’s a-fallin!’”

I’ll never forget the image, in the stormless quiet of the morning, of my sister standing on the fallen massive tree in the long driveway that leads to the back of my parents’ home, its long dark branches silent and helpless.

Such are the memories captured in my mom’s little book. And such are the expressions stored in some lobe of my dad’s wondrous brain that under a microscope surely looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption.

Volunteer rides with a heart for community

2008-06-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on June 10, 2008.

A few weeks ago, Jerry Pentin was riding his bicycle along Calaveras Road near the Sunol Regional Wilderness. Like most of his excursions along this favorite route, the ride was scenic, but uneventful.

That is, until a mountain lion stepped onto the road 25 feet ahead.

“I let out a loud and long ‘Wow!’” said Pentin, who lives in Pleasanton.

This startled the lion, which simultaneously looked at Pentin and crouched, then scurried across the road to jump 8 feet onto a hillside. It then jumped up another 8 feet and looked down at Pentin as he came to a stop to admire the cat.

“I've spent my life in the outdoors of California,” said Pentin, 51, who owns Spring Street Studios, a video production firm that has served most of the big companies in Silicon Valley. The studio has also shot hours of wildlife footage for a diverse clientele.

“I've shot video of desert tortoises, rattle snakes, ospreys, and sharks,” Pentin said, “and I’ve encountered bobcats and lynx along with lots of wild critters over the years.”

Since Pentin started cycling a few years ago, he has seen raptors, elk, a fox, a coyote, and now the mountain lion. “I even had a bald eagle fly right over my head just a few weeks ago,” he said.

While Pentin enjoys cycling for exercise and has ridden over 1,800 miles this year alone, he’s become something of an advocate for cycling in Pleasanton.

“I’m currently the vice chair of the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee,” said Pentin, who also serves as a Parks and Recreation commissioner since 2004 and is the liaison to the East Bay Regional Park District. “The advisory committee has been formed to create a master plan to make Pleasanton a friendlier place for bicyclists and pedestrians," he said.

Community involvement is a way of life for Pentin. As a member of Rotary since 1984, he has participated in numerous community projects, and chaired for three years an annual event where local service clubs worked together to provide repairs and litter clean up throughout Pleasanton.

In March 1997, he was appointed to the Pleasanton Golf Course Committee by then-mayor Ben Tarver after a meeting with Tarver and council members Sharrell Michelotti and Kay Ayala.

“We thought it would take between a year and 18 months for the committee to complete its work on Callippe Preserve,” Pentin said. The course opened eight years later in November 2005. “Not exactly a short 18 months."

Pentin, who served in the Marines and is distantly related to the famous feuding Hatfields, was also appointed to the Veterans Building Task Force, which oversaw renovation of the historic hall, and he has participated in various other committees over the years, including Trails Ad Hoc and the Kottinger Place task force. “One of my favorite task forces involved public art in the downtown,” he said.

Along with donating his time, Pentin often involves the talented employees of Spring Street Studios in creating videos to support fundraisers.

“I'm proud of the work my studio has produced over the years with non-profits,” he said. The videos have raised tens of thousands of dollars, especially for wheelchairs, many of which Pentin has personally delivered with other Pleasanton North Rotarians in Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico.

Pentin credits his wife of 24 years, Josine, with allowing him to dedicate so much time to volunteer work. “I’m blessed to have found someone who understands my passion for community,” he said, adding, with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “and she's pretty darn good looking too.”

When he’s not serving others or pursuing his goal to cycle 3,660 miles this year, Pentin enjoys supporting his daughter and her pursuit of golf. “I’ve traveled with Joi to more than 100 tournaments over the years, many that take us all over the United States,” he said.

Pentin first gave his daughter a set of clubs at age four. She showed a knack for the game, and now, at 16, has played in three Junior World Championships and in two Walmart 1st Tee Opens at Pebble Beach, along with other national junior tournaments.

“I enjoy serving our community and participating in my various roles in life,” Pentin said, “but my favorite role is as Joi’s dad.”

TV worth watching

2008-05-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in April 2008

The phone rang. It was Darla Stevens, then-executive director of TV30.

The year was 1999, and she was getting back to me about my proposal for a new show for Tri-Valley Community Television. My idea was to interview local authors and feature programs that encouraged reading and literacy in our region.
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I knew it was a long shot. A banker with an English major was going to launch a new TV show?

Yeah, right.

I’d watched TV30 over the years, and enjoyed its local programming designed just for the Tri-Valley (the station broadcasts to Comcast subscribers primarily in Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and San Ramon). But I also knew the budget for the station was next to nothing. So my proposal included volunteering my time to produce and host the show, to solicit sponsors, to do post-production editing and to draw sketches of five famous authors to use as a backdrop for the set: Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou and Marcel Proust.
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So when I heard her voice of the phone, I didn’t know what to expect.

“I’m calling about the show,” she said. “We like your idea.”
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A few months later I was in the studio. My sketches had been professionally enlarged and were in place on the set. My first guest was sitting with me, a poet named Dr. Edmond Chow. I remember the rush of adrenaline in the glaring lights as the camera operator counted down the seconds and suddenly I was saying something about a new television show on community television and welcoming our first guest.
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And with that, “In A Word” aired its first episode.
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Since then, we’ve interviewed both local and nationally known authors, including Scott Adams, Frank Delaney, Elizabeth Berg, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Natalie Goldberg, and many more. We’ve promoted literary events and library programs, chronicled the success of Harry Potter to get youngsters reading, shot interviews on location, and gained sponsors, including Towne Center Books in Pleasanton.

After several years of hosting the show alone, I welcomed Kathy Cordova to “In A Word” as co-host and producer. She introduced the idea for a book club segment where we read a monthly book and invite local readers to come on television and discuss the work.

Kathy and I enjoy hosting the monthly, 30-minute show and promoting what occasionally seems like the disappearing love of reading in our country. We’re both regularly published writers, so our passion for the craft often spills over into on air discussions. We hope our enthusiasm encourages people to write their own stories or to pick up a book and read.

We’re especially grateful for the support we get from viewers who tune in to watch not only our show, but the other programs on channels 28, 29, and 30.
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With TV30 in the news lately, largely due to budget constraints, news producer and interim executive director Kevin Wing sees a bright future for the station: “All of us at TV30 are in the midst of this wonderful opportunity to do what we can to make the station an even better place to watch locally-produced television," he said. "We provide a necessity for the community that isn't offered with any other Bay Area television station.”

Wing said that all of the programs focus in one way or another on the Tri-Valley. “This includes programs of interest to our viewers, whether it's getting local news, watching a city council meeting, staying healthy, or finding the best coffeehouse in Pleasanton or San Ramon."
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Wing is especially encouraged that businesses underwriting the station are renewing their long-term contracts, and potential sponsors have inquired just recently about financially supporting the station. Sponsors such as Big-O Tires and Splashes Car Wash are promoted to the thousands of TV30 viewers through television spots.

Certainly, the station faces budgetary challenges as it seeks to replace aging equipment, maintain its programming, and create a new vision given today’s Tri-Valley viewer. Since the station is funded in large part by Tri-Valley cities, the mayors of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and San Ramon are taking an active role in studying and tackling these challenges.

Writing as a TV30 volunteer who was lucky enough to see my idea for a TV show about books and authors become a reality, I know that TV30 is a gem in our community. The few employees of the station work long hours to bring us local programming, to air council and school board meetings that often run late into the night, and to ensure that our community television remains focused on serving the needs of its many viewers.

Running 50 miles

2008-04-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, April 5, 2008, my wife and I ran in a 50-mile race called the American River 50-mile Endurance Run.

At 6 a.m, about 500 runners shuffled off into the darkness along the paved American River Parkway. Given the course and its logistics, we had to actually run the first mile in the opposite direction from the finish line, then loop back to pass the start area.

Ah, just 48 more miles to go.

Pam and I ran together for 27 miles to a key checkpoint, called Beal's Point. (Although there was no marker at the 26.2 marathon distance, a nearby runner with a GPS Garmin announced our marathon time at approximately 5 hours, 10 minutes. Not bad even for a marathon-only distance.)

Beal's Point is the approximate point at which the relatively flat (and paved) pathway ends and the hilly trails begin. We had a drop bag at Beal's Point, and changed from our regular running shoes into trail running shoes. Because I was feeling very strong at that point, Pam and decided I would go on ahead, allowing Pam to run the same pace we'd been running. I told her "I love you," and set off as she filled her water bottle at the Beal's Point aid station.

Since we'd never run a 50-mile race before, we had only a general idea what our finishing times might be. Because runners must cross the finish line no later than 7 p.m. (or 13 hours), our first goal was simply to finish under 13 hours. In other words, we didn't want to run for, say, 45 miles, only to miss one of the cut-off times required along the route and be pulled from the race, which does happen each year to a small percentage of the runners.

So just finishing was our goal, though our 'dream' goal (there's always a dream goal) was to finish under 12 hours.

Leaving Beal's Point, runners soon encounter hills and single track trails. I found this to be a good time to turn back on my iPod Shuffle to create that fuzzy glow that music can create. Soon I was running with old favorites, including a few John Denver songs that fit amazingly with the scenery.

And speaking of scenery, the views of the river and Folsom Lake were awe-inspiring. The weather, too, was perfect, and we counted ourselves fortunate since we'd heard that it had rained on and off at the race the two prior years, creating mud and streams along some of the trail.

As I ran the trails, I wondered how Pam was doing behind me. Having run several 30-mile training runs over hilly trails on the Pleasanton Ridge near our home, I knew that Pam had the endurance and determination to finish the race--barring any injury or mishap. Still, I hoped she was doing well and I even said a prayer to keep her safe.

So the miles ticked by and my legs and hips actually felt less pain than they had in the earlier part of the race. At 51 years old, I've become friends with pain, especially on longer runs. But apparently we had an understanding at this point (a little Advil didn't hurt either) and I was feeling, well, quite good. (I was going to say I was feeling "in the groove," but as a writer I try to avoid cliches like the plague. But that's how I felt. )

Running so well and passing about 20 runners in the last half of the race, I resisted the urge to look too closely at my watch and calculate my finish time, but I knew I was going to finish easily under 13 hours.

One wonderful part of running these long races is greeting people along the way. Everyone was so friendly, and we all shared "good job!" remarks with one another. In some cases, you can end up running several miles with people and hearing a bit about their running experiences and even their lives, and these encounters are just great.

Other highlights are the aid stations along the route, including the volunteers who are wonderful people of all ages. This race had 12 aid stations, most with names associated with their location along the lake or river, such as Buzzard's Cove and Granite Bay. The last aid station, which you must reach by 6:20 p.m. or you are pulled out of the race, is aptly titled Last Gasp.

The stations are little islands of food and drink that feature water, sports drink (GU20), Oreo cookies, boiled potatoes (which you dip in salt to keep your legs from cramping), bananas, M & Ms (which I never eat but ate by the handful to replenish my energy), potato chips, Goldfish, brownies, carbonated soda (not diet, but full of sugar), and similar items. At one station they even had ice cream cones. Aid stations are guilt-free zones where ultra runners can eat like 6 year olds. After all, 50 miles burns up about 5,000 calories and unless you eat as you run, you WILL run out of energy and have to stop. (The body can only store enough energy for about 20 miles. That's why marathon runners often hit "the wall" at that point.)

At the second-to-last aid station, called Manhattan Bar (again, named for that spot along the river and not because they were serving margaritas), with 6.8 miles to the finish, I finally allowed myself to speculate on what my finishing time might be. I looked at my watch and knew I would finish around 10 hours and 45 minutes, more than an hour under our dream goal of less than 12 hours.

Soon I was at Last Gasp, with the finish only 2.4 miles away, but it's almost all uphill, and fairly steep in parts on a wide gravel road. I turned on my ipod again (sometimes I ran with no music just to enjoy the quiet), and there was Josh Groban singing You Lift Me Up, an inspiring song that never fails to, well, inspire me. Here I was moving up this steep road and looking ahead to several runners in the late afternoon sunlight who were walking, running a few steps, then walking again. Some had friends with them for encouragement in the final miles.

I was moved by what I was seeing. Here were men and women reaching deep into themselves to achieve something many would call crazy: running 50 miles in one day. In these final two miles, I could see in their labored footsteps why they had come, why they trudged on in spite of the pain they knew even before the race that they would feel at this point. And I knew as well that I had come for the same reason: to encounter ourselves and our limits in ways we don't get to feel every day. By being here, we got to become the indescribable joy of pushing through a physical challenge that many would never attempt; to touch the DNA of our early human / pre-technology ancestry; and to rediscover what it feels like to be fully and completely alive.

As I crossed the finish line, the time read 10 hours, 39 minutes. And as the loud speaker announced my name and welcomed me to Auburn, I felt I was being delivered back into the world after 50 miles of labor.

After a short rest, I took off my race number (443) and headed back down the hill to find an attractive woman I'd been running with earlier. I was intrigued by her, and wondered how she was doing. I knew her race number by heart: 444.

We saw each other at the same time about two miles from the finish. I pointed at her and she lifted her arms in triumph. As I accompanied her the final two miles, we swapped stories of the last 22 miles that we'd run separately. It was so good to see her.

Pam crossed the finish line in 11 hours and 47 minutes--under her dream goal of 12 hours. As the announcer read her name, I was so proud of her and of us, two reborn and fully alive human beings.

Here we are before the start of the race wearing plastic garbage bag liners for warmth provided by Steve Tuggle, Pam's brother. We stayed in Auburn with Steve and Michele. Thanks guys!

Race director Greg Soderlund welcomed us and reviewed the course at the banquet the night before the race. Greg is also the director for Way Too Cool, a 50 kilometer (31.5 mile) race, and the famous Western States 100-mile Endurance Run.

Here we are with Tim Twietmeyer, who attended the banquet. Tim lives in Auburn and has run the American River 50 21 times. He has also run the 100-mile Western States race numerous times, and won Western States five times. He was very friendly and gave us a few last minute tips for the next day. Yes, he's a famous runner.

Still a long way to go

2008-03-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

The last rays of sunlight illuminated a craggy mountain in Death Valley as I steadily pedaled my bicycle toward the finish of a long ride this past weekend. At that moment, I’d ridden 120 miles, with 30 more to go.

I did a quick mental calculation. If I could finish 150 miles, it would be the same as leaving Pleasanton and riding my bike over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, then to Napa, on to Santa Rosa, and finally arriving in Ukiah.

I knew my wife Pam had probably finished her ride of 105 miles, along with our friend Jerry Pentin. And somewhere ahead of me three other friends—Bryan Gillette, Gary Boal, and Barry Schwartz—were attempting to ride a full 200 miles in a single day.

Back for our second year, we’d driven nine hours to Death Valley to participate with some 300 riders in a sport we enjoy, to test our endurance, to test our resolve, to enjoy the stunning beauty of Death Valley, and, for the six of us, to raise money for the “We the People” competition civics teams of Pleasanton’s two comprehensive high schools, and Amador High’s Mock Trial team.

The competition civics students need to raise more than $40,000 to travel back to Washington D.C. to represent Pleasanton and California in the national competition. For three years in a row, they won the state division, and in the past two years they took second in the nationals.

At one point as my bicycle and I climbed an almost relentless 3,300 feet from below sea level up to Salsberry Pass, I thought about the team of high school students. Only a few nights earlier I’d shaken their hands at a school board meeting, proud of their commitment to learn and debate about our constitution, proud of the commitment of their advisor, Brian Ladd.

But I was also proud to know that our team of riders had gathered donations from companies and individuals to help fund that long trip to Washington.

For my long trip through Death Valley, I was now reminded how every long bike ride comes with thoughts and thoughts and thoughts. With none of life’s common distractions, and aside from the occasional chatting with fellow riders or volunteers at the aid stations, 13 hours on a bicycle provides a generous supply of time to just sit and think.

So, here is a condensed version of my thoughts over 13 hours: I hope I don’t get a flat. Can I really ride this far? When’s the next aid station? Wow that’s a beautiful mountain. That guy has a cool bike. Look at those yellow desert flowers. I wonder how my wife is doing on her ride? I wish I could tell my kids I’m fine because they were worried about Dad riding so far. I wish my brother were here riding with me. Look at that long road ahead! What time is it now? Why do people do stuff like this? I love my wife. I love my kids. Look at that incredible view. Will this hill ever end? Here comes someone going the other way which means the turnaround point can’t be far. I’m feeling pretty good. I’m not feeling so good. I’m going to sleep well tonight. I hope they have cookies at the next aid station. I’m running low on water. What time is it? Why am I doing this? At age 51 should I really be doing this? Why can’t I be home reading? I love this. I love my kids. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I love her so much. It’s getting dark, I’ll turn on my lights. I wish I was in that car that just went by. Only 20 more miles. I really miss my wife. Thank you, God, for all the blessings in my life and for the beauty of nature. I see the rear lights of a few riders ahead. Just 10 more miles. Wow it’s really dark now. I can’t believe I’ve been riding since 6 this morning. Maybe next year I’ll try to ride the whole 200 miles. Maybe next year I’ll just ride 105 miles with my wife. Maybe next year I'll go to a movie. I can’t wait to eat a sandwich. Hey there are the lights of the finish way in the distance. Just 3 more miles. Will I finish? Yes I’ll finish. I feel tired but wow do I feel great….

And then I pulled into the finish area and was greeted by my wife and Jerry and that wonderful feeling of getting off my bike and sitting in a real chair.

And in the same way this column just sort of ends, that’s how a long bike ride ends. All of a sudden, you’re finished.

But in a way, we’re not finished, because we’re still gathering donations for the civics students, who travel to Washington in May. We’re short of our goal to raise $10,000, and every dollar helps. So send me an email if you want to make a difference in the life of a student. Donations are tax deductible.

And as much as I love the amazing fulfillment when riding my bike, it’s always nice to come home.

All photos taken by Jerry Pentin. Thanks to the many individuals and the following sponsors for helping us raise funds: CyclePath, Big-O Tires of Pleasanton, ClubSport, UNCLE Credit Union, Spring Street Studios, and Hopyard Alehouse.

Essays tell tales

2008-02-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on February 19, 2008.

One of my favorite moments teaching college English is discovering the stories of students when I read their essays. I never know what tale of woe or triumph or joy I might encounter.

Imagine turning, as I did recently, to an essay in a stack and reading this: “In 1975, the communists from North Vietnam overran the south not long after the American soldiers left. My family faced a dark future.”

The student describes her many years in and out of prison for repeated attempts to escape her country. Until I read her words, I had no idea that the quiet Asian woman in the third row of my class had endured such hardships, the threat of malaria and other diseases, or that she’d escaped by bicycle through Cambodia to Thailand.

Of course, not all essays are so dramatic. Many well-written papers describe interesting vacations or experiences falling in love or the trauma of divorce or people who made a difference in the students’ lives.

Sometimes the essays are funny, such as one that got me smiling by a young man who writes, “I’ve been breaking stuff since I can remember. Somehow, I broke all four windows in my friend’s Honda Civic by leaning on them the wrong way. He also has a beanbag couch I put a huge gash in because my keys were sticking out of my pocket. That room turn into a winter wonderland.”

Later in the essay, this writer asserts that he comes from a long line of men who were known for breaking things: “The crack in the Liberty Bell was an accident by my great-great-great grandfather.” And the leaning tower of Pisa, he claims, got that way due to “a stick of beef jerky, a goldfish, and a hot Italian chick” that one of his ancestral grandfathers was wooing. “But that’s a whole other story,” he writes.

Some essays move in unexpected directions, such as one that introduces a morning in a hospital never to be forgotten on September 11, 2001. But as the essay unfolds, the memorable moment, we discover, is not the loss of life and the destruction of the twin towers. Rather, writes the author, “I’ll always remember it as the day my life began. Some people call it a moment of clarity, others call it an epiphany. I don’t know exactly what to call it, but when I held my baby girl, I was a new man. I had a purpose. I was a father now.”

Other memorable essays involve heartbreaking or suspenseful moments, such as when one writer describes helplessly witnessing the drowning of his friend as the brute force of a river pulls him under, or another suspenseful essay that begins, “I remember the doctor telling us she could die in her sleep. I remember not really understanding what it meant that she needed surgery.” This author tells about her younger sister’s successful journeys through heart and scoliosis surgery, her visits in and out of the hospital for various conditions. “She only complained when it really hurt,” she writes. “Her attitude toward life is strong-willed.”

As a teacher, I enjoy engaging students in the process of writing. Often an artistic and therapeutic tool, writing is a healthy activity on many levels. It requires a mental focus, and prompts us to think through elements of our lives we may not have explored in much depth.

When I read the essays, I share in the lives and hopes and dreams of my students. In one essay, an 18-year-old woman shares her love of dancing, a love she’s had her whole life.

“Dancing has taught me to be determined,” she writes. “I may not become a famous dancer, but I know it will help me in whatever I decide to do. At heart, I will always be the little girl pulling on her soft pink tights and leotard in awe of the art that is dance.”

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Jazz Happens

2008-02-05T07:36:00.000-08:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on February 5, 2008.

When Jim Campana first raised his conductor’s baton in 1959 at Amador Valley High in Pleasanton, the school had just 20 students enrolled in music. By the time he retired two decades years later, 300 students were signed up for band and the popular music courses.

“Friday night football and basketball games came alive thanks to the band,” said Eileen Morley Hofstadt, who was a student at Amador in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “In those days, Jim Campana was always there in his quiet way, inspiring young talent.”

Impressed with Campana’s success and reputation with students and music, the city of Pleasanton asked him to help establish a Pleasanton jazz festival.

“The city recreation department had been interested in having me put together a festival that would include bands from a variety of schools,” said Campana, who is now 81 and lives in Sonora with his wife Rosemary. “But I was so busy I kept putting them off.”

Finally, in 1975, at the Pleasanton Hotel, in what Campana calls a “moment of weakness,” he agreed. The first festival included 30 bands and was held that year at the Alameda County fairgrounds.

"We had a good first festival,” Campana said, “though it rained that day. Fortunately we were able to use the exhibition building and move the instruments and equipment inside.”

Over the years, more and more people gathered to hear the talented students perform. After Campana’s retirement in 1979, the Pleasanton jazz festival was appropriately renamed after the man who made it all possible.

Now in its 33rd year, the Campana Jazz Festival will take place at Amador Valley High School this Saturday, February 9, featuring more than 700 middle and high school students in 45 jazz ensembles from 24 schools around California. Schools from as far away as Folsom and Roseville will compete in the event.

Performances run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., followed by a ceremony where over $7,000 in sponsorships to various jazz camps will be awarded. Wristbands for the festival may be purchased throughout the day for $6 at the Amador Theater lobby. A festival program will be included containing the complete day’s schedule.

Thanks to the vision of co-chairs Carl and Marilyn Palowitch, the festival this year is now part of a larger “Campana Jazz Weekend,” with jazz happening all around Pleasanton.

“In planning for our 2008 festival,” Carl Palowitch said, “we contacted the Pleasanton Downtown Association, the library, and the city of Pleasanton, and together we coordinated our respective jazz events to create a weekend where the public can encounter jazz all around the city.”

Kicking off the weekend this Thursday evening is the Pleasanton Downtown Association’s popular wine stroll, titled Truffles, Tidbits and Wine Tasting.

“Imagine pairing the taste of a chardonnay or cabernet to the sounds of seven jazz ensembles at venues up and down Main Street,” said Christine Salidivar, Executive Director of the association. "We’re excited to bring jazz and wine to our downtown.” Because the wine stroll events almost always sell out, contact the downtown association right away for tickets at 925-484-2199.

Following Thursday’s wine stroll, Pleasanton’s Civic Arts Presents will host on Friday saxophonist and composer Ravi Coltrane at the Amador Theater, who will also give a jazz clinic for Foothill and Amador jazz students that afternoon. Coltrane, the son of jazz legends John and Alice Coltrane, is described as a young jazz pioneer. Tickets may be purchased at the door at 8 p.m. or online at www.civicartstickets.com.

On Sunday following Saturday’s Campana Jazz Festival, the Pleasanton Library will host the Silver Moon Band at 1:30 p.m., followed by the Lee Waterman Latin Band “Jazz Caliente” at 3:30 p.m. These performances are free and open to the public.

Carl Palowitch said that for the first time vocal jazz will be a part of the festival on Saturday. He also noted that many people don’t realize the festival is more than a venue for students to perform.

“This is an educational festival,” he said, “where students come to observe and learn, to attend workshops, and to get instruction from the judges and other music educators.”

The festival each year is a collaboration of many community members, including the Amador Friends of Music, instructors Jon Grantham and Mark Aubel, the Amador Music Department, parent and student volunteers, regional music educators, music camps, local businesses, and others.

This kind of collaboration and love of music is what first brought Campana to town to teach more than 45 years ago. It’s what will bring him back this weekend to attend the festival he created.

“Pleasanton has always been a town that appreciates music,” he said. “I loved my years teaching, and I’m looking forward to coming back to see friends and hear the students perform.”

Conversing about verse to high school sophomores

2008-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on January 22, 2008.

I recently accepted an invitation to speak about poetry to several honors English classes at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton. I suppose my credentials as a past poet laureate of Pleasanton and my decade of teaching writing at Las Positas College helped assure English teacher Wendy Garner that I might have something interesting to say.

It also didn’t hurt that my 15-year-old daughter, Melissa, wanted me to address not only her class, but several other classes as well. It’s not every day a teenaged girl wants her dad around when other teens are present, so I was happy to take up the challenge.

While I’m used to talking about poetry with college students, I was initially uncertain at the thought of standing in front of sophomores.

What, exactly, would I say?

Ms. Garner had asked me via email to share some of my own poetry, as well as the process I use for writing poetry. But which poems would I select? Would the students relate to my work? Would teenagers even care about the poetry of a baby boomer?

The key, I knew, was to present whatever I said with passion, high energy, humor, and yes, technology.

So when I stepped in front of the first class, I did what any wise professor would do to capture the youngsters’ attention: I clicked on a video from YouTube.

Up came an animated poem by former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. The students fell silent as the short video mixed visual images with Collins’ spoken poetic words. Next I showed a PowerPoint slide listing elements of good poetry. Another slide gave examples of haiku.

Then I transitioned into one of my own poems. Projected on the screen, the poem recounted the funeral after the shooting death of a young woman. The poem refers to a “dead sister” named Natalie.

Because I wrote the poem, the students assumed as I read the somber verses that I had lost my own sister to murder.

As I finished reading the poem, I noted that my sister’s name is Laurie and she lives in San Francisco "and is very much alive. This is a fictional poem.”

As the room instantly lightened, I described how poets have the ability to explore though words the common experience of what it means to be human. Even if we have not lost a sister to death, we can tap into that experience and examine it through our work.

Next I shared a lighter poem, a published sonnet I’d written about how great life would be to have an English accent.

“By the way, how many lines are in a sonnet?” I asked the kids.

The students muttered various numbers.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I expect to hear a clear answer, and it’s 14. So how many lines in a sonnet?”

“Fourteen!” the students recited back.

“Can there ever be 12?”

“No!” they said.

“So how many lines in a sonnet?” I asked again.

“Fourteen!”

Along with sharing two other poems I’d written, I recited a few famous poems I knew by heart during the 50-minute talks. I encouraged the students to memorize their favorite poems, and I pointed out that I’d recited Hamlet’s soliloquy so many times over the years that my daughter memorized the lines when she was a little girl, and knows them to this day.

As each presentation drew to a close, I encouraged the classes to consider registering for the upcoming Poetry, Prose, and Arts Festival (www.PleasantonArts.org) taking place in Pleasanton on April 5 and 6.

Now in its 7th year, the festival has been so successful that it has expanded to two days, offering workshops in poetry and prose for both adults and teens, poetry for younger kids, writing contests for all ages, book signings, performances by musical and dramatic groups, a fine arts exhibit, even a keynote address by award-winning poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield.

While I appreciated Ms. Garner’s enthusiasm and an invitation to return to the school next year, I felt I’d connected with students when a week later I received 67 handwritten notes.

While each note is wonderful, one from a young man echoed many other students' remarks, suggesting that I'd bridged the generation gap. He wrote quite simply, “I like your ink, Mr. O.”

2008 Arizona Rock 'N Roll Marathon

2008-01-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

Seven friends from Pleasanton traveled to Arizona in January 2008 to run in the Rock N Roll Marathon. The marathon (26.2 miles) and half-marathon (13.1) started in Phoenix, and ended in Tempe, where we stayed. Pam and I ran the full 26.2 miles, and our friends ran the half-marathon.

Pam took this of me at the start of the marathon.

This is Bobby, from Colorado. I ended up running quite a few miles with him during the race. He's an ultra marathon runner, in training to run Leadville, which is a 100 mile run. This 26.2 mile marathon was just a short training run for him!

We had a great time getting away for a weekend of exercise, lots of eating (it seemed like we were always eating), and lots of relaxation -- of course, after running 13 or 26 miles, anything feels like relaxation!

Valley Humane Society teaches pets aren't toys

2008-01-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on January 8, 2008.

By the end of this year, Wendy McNelley will have stood before every second grader in Pleasanton and delivered to them a dog or a cat, along with its own carrying case.

With these pets come a profile that tells the animal’s name, age, what it eats, and some of the animal’s special traits.

Oh, it’s worth noting that the pets are plush stuffed animals.

McNelley, program director for Pleasanton’s Valley Humane Society, has already met this past December with 120 kids in their classrooms to introduce this new program, called Keeler’s Kids, that allows children to experience the level of commitment needed to care for a pet.

“It's just wonderful to have those light-bulb moments where you can see the students understand what a big responsibility it is to own a dog or cat,” McNelley said. “This is a hands-on lesson, so they take away so much more than if we just went in and lectured for 45 minutes.”

Named after Joyce Keeler, a 40-year educator in Livermore who left a significant donation to Valley Humane Society after her death in 2005, Keeler’s Kids teaches students about pet overpopulation and the importance of spaying and neutering. Then, through use of a workbook and catalogs, the children go to a pet store and to a veterinarian to learn what costs are involved.

“The kids are always shocked at the $300 to $400 price tag,” said McNelley, who shared a funny moment when the youngsters quietly totaled the expenses. One little boy finished his addition, smacked his forehead, and announced "Sheesh, this is getting expensive. And money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"

McNelley said such moments allow the children to see that pets require money, time and effort, and are not toys. In fact, when McNelley and her helper went back on a second day for another round of classes, two little girls from the previous day were carrying their pets to lunch with them.

“They didn't want to leave them at home where they would get lonely,” McNelley said. “One little girl had put a sweater on her dog because it was cold out. I loved that.”

The students are surprised to learn that in most cases they will have their animals until the children grow up and turn 26 or 27 years old. McNelley said most students are not able to fathom being that old.

Kids also learn that for every pet in this country to have a home, every person would have to adopt 15 dogs and 45 cats. This means that a home of four people would have 60 dogs and 180 cats.

“At first, the kids think this would be fun,” McNelley said, “but then we talk about all that poop. Yuck! They get the point.”

At the end of the presentation, students fill out an adoption application and contract, similar to the documents used at Valley Humane Society. At this point, if they don't think they’re ready for the responsibility, the children may choose not to adopt their animal.

“It’s a pivotal moment in the lesson when they really comprehend the amount of work ahead of them,” McNelley said.

McNelley hopes one day to expand Keeler’s Kids to other school districts, but needs to focus for now on Pleasanton. She would also like to adapt the program for high school students.

To make a donation or to learn more about Valley Humane Society and its many worthwhile programs, visit www.valleyhumane.org or call (925) 426-8656.

100 Years of Joy

2007-12-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on December 27, 2007. The idea for the column and the invitation to the Rotary luncheon came from Jacquie Williams Courtright, owner of Alden Lane Nursery and current president of the Rotary Club of Livermore. Thanks Jacquie!

Imagine you are 99 years old and in a few days you’ll be turning 100. Teddy Roosevelt was president when you were born, 50 years ago you were 50, and you drove a car until you were 97.

Far-fetched? Read on.

Now you’re seated at a luncheon with tables of people who’ve gathered to make a fuss over your birthday and the birthday of another nearly 100-year-old woman.

While she’s not in attendance, you are, and in a moment you’ll be asked to stand and speak.

At nearly 100 years, what could you possibly say to sum up your life?

Keep reading to discover what Dr. Grace Devnich said to some 125 Rotarians who gathered last week to celebrate her 100 years and the 100 years of Henrietta Greer, both of Livermore.

While Greer was unable to attend, Devnich was on hand as several eloquent individuals spoke about her and Greer.

Local historian Anne Homan provided an overview of the era when the women were born, a time before television, radios, or movies. Homan touched on the lives of Devnich and Greer, which led into remarks by former Livermore mayor Dr. John Shirley who provided a wonderful introduction of Devnich, Livermore’s first woman doctor.

“Grace delivered 800 babies,” said Dr. Shirley, “and for many years she only charged $125 for prenatal care and the delivery,” he said.

Dr. Shirley said that Devnich and her husband, Henry, who was also a doctor, came to Livermore in 1948 to set up their practice. Devnich still lives in the house they bought on K Street in 1952.

Born in Colorado, Devnich first attended Union College in Nebraska, where she met Henry in 1929. In time, the couple saved enough money to attend medical school at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1945.

The two practiced medicine for more than three decades in Livermore, made house calls that initially cost just three dollars, and touched the lives of thousands of people. Shirley reminisced about the birth of his own four children through Devnich’s caring hands.

In 1992, Devnich lost Henry to a brain aneurysm, but not before the couple spent 16 years together in retirement, traveling and enjoying their golden years.

More recently, Devnich has become an author, having written a book about her husband’s family.

Similarly, though she was absent, Henrietta Greer and her life were introduced by Bill Nebo, who said that Greer’s family first arrived in Livermore in 1936 and settled onto a dairy farm out on Patterson Pass Road. Greer met her future husband, Tom, when he reported for work at the ranch after a San Francisco employment agency had placed the former Colorado cowboy in Livermore.

Nebo told a funny story about when Tom was struggling to coax a rambunctious mare into a corral. Greer watched for a while, then suggested she might help.

“If you can get this mare into the corral,” Tom told her, “I’ll give you five bucks.”

At the time, five dollars was a lot of money, and Greer simply opened the corral gate and called, “Tessie, get in here!”

The mare quietly did as she was told. Tom never paid her the five dollars, Nebo said, but he did marry her.

Nebo, who met Greer in 1972 and calls her his adopted mother, said that Greer is a woman who knows the difference between what one wants and what one needs, a woman who values companionship and relationship, who respects people of all age groups, and who understands the need for balance between work and enjoyment.

“For a woman who mended many cattle fences over the years,” Nebo said, “Henrietta is a woman with very few fences in her life. She accepts people for who they are and sees the best in them.”

After the introduction, when it came time for Devnich to stand and address the assembled Rotarians and guests, everyone stood and applauded. Devnich slowly made her way to the lectern, and as she reached for the microphone, the moment became emotional.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” she said, “but I just can’t speak about it or I might begin to cry.”

And with that, she returned to her seat to thunderous applause.

With those few words, Devnich summed up 100 years of giving and receiving, of births and deaths, of healing and loss, of happiness, and yes, of joyful tears.

Dr. Grace Devnich spoke only for a moment, but her words filled the Livermore Rotarians with great joy.

2007-12-24T12:25:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Otts!

Spare the rod and spoil the child?

2007-12-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

When Danville resident Frank Hanna was growing up in a small Texas town, his mother used to swat him with a limb from a backyard peach tree for misbehaving.

“My mom kept a peach switch on top of the refrigerator,” said Hanna, 46, who speaks with a Texas accent. “One night after everyone fell asleep, I climbed up and broke that switch into about 500 pieces.”

Hanna was abruptly awakened the next morning by the whacking of a new peach switch his mother simply pulled from the tree.

“As she administered the punishment, she suggested I never again break her switch into pieces,” he said, smiling.

Hanna’s experiences echo the memories of many who grew up with some form of corporal punishment, whether by teachers or parents.

Wayne Yeaw of Pleasanton recalls that in the 1950s his father used a long stick, carved with little faces like a totem pole, to punish him and his siblings when they stepped out of line.

“My dad would line us up,” he said, “and if whoever was responsible for whatever happened didn’t confess, he would swat all of us.”

Whacking youngsters and even adults to encourage better behavior dates back many centuries. In the Middle Ages, corporal punishment was common in Europe and authorized by religious leaders who viewed the practice as a healthy way to discipline the wayward human body. This philosophy found its way into medieval schools, and was introduced into America with the first settlers, spawning in this country more than three centuries of discipline by such methods.

California banned corporal punishment in public schools in 1986, though only after it was made illegal in child care centers, youth authorities, and state prisons. This meant for a period of time in California a prison guard couldn’t swat a convicted felon, but a teacher could paddle a youngster. In fact, only by a narrow margin were legislators persuaded that children are unable to learn effectively when threatened by physical punishment.

Approximately half of the population in the United States believes that modest corporal punishment is an acceptable method of disciplining a child, including 22 states that allow their schools to administer some form of such punishment.

In fact, just over a decade ago in response to growing behavior problems in California schools, conservative Republican legislators in Sacramento—led by a feisty 68-year-old retired Marine from Orange County named Mickey Conroy—sponsored two bills, one to reintroduce the option of corporal punishment into the classroom with certain limitations, and a second that would allow a judge to order a parent or bailiff to paddle a juvenile graffiti vandal up to ten times with a wooden paddle.

Both bills met with strong Democratic opposition, especially the corporal punishment bill. Opponents pointed to studies showing that paddling and other forms of humiliating physical punishment create resentment and teach children that violence is acceptable. The bills were defeated.

Still, Hanna observed that his fellow high school students did benefit from the occasional whipping by his Texas football coaches, and he does credit his loving mother’s peach switch with amending his own occasional errant behavior.

In the end, though, corporal punishment only goes so far.

“When I was about 12,” Hanna said, “my mother used one of my dad’s belts to give me a whipping. Regardless of how hard she swung that belt it just didn’t hurt much.”

Hanna remembers looking at his mother when suddenly they both burst into laughter.

“We nearly died laughing as we realized whipping me was no longer going to be effective.”

When writing becomes healing

2007-11-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in November 2007.

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Martella gave birth to a girl she named Viviana. Like many new mothers, Martella held the baby in her arms for pictures, and made prints on paper from her daughter’s tiny palms and feet.

But the occasion was not happy.

“Having a stillborn baby means dealing with very hard emotions,” said Martella, who lives in Lathrop. “For months my mind raced with questions of guilt and misgivings.”

To cope with the tragedy, she turned to the love of her husband, Jorge, but she also turned to poetry.

“Writing was a way of healing for me,” she said.

In fact, Martella, 35, has tapped into the power of writing poetry to grapple with the many challenges life has thrown her way.

When she was eight, her father left his wife and children for another woman.

“I was devastated,” she said, “and I still have difficulty with this.”

Martella’s mother, who was born in Taiwan and met Martella’s father when he was a Marine overseas, moved her young family from San Francisco to Oakland to live with her sister. “My mom was a strong woman,” Martella said, noting that her mother had to work three jobs—as a waitress, a hotel housekeeper, and a late-night janitor—just to support her family.

As Martella wrestled in her pre-teen years with her father’s absence, she became the victim of sexual abuse by a cousin. This went on for many years until she turned 14, when she stood up to him and said no more.

After high school, Martella took a few classes at Merritt College and started working. “Growing up with barely any food to eat sometimes,” she said, “it was great to be able to make my own money, so I left college and began working full time.”

Martella managed a Chevron service station and one day met a young man whose family had immigrated from Buenos Aires. “I soon discovered that Jorge was my soul mate,” she said.

A kind and caring husband, Jorge understood and loved Martella like no one else ever had. Then, a few years after the loss of their first baby, they were blessed in 2001 with a baby girl they named Izabella.

Though from the outside it appeared life was settling down for the Martellas, an avalanche of unresolved inner conflict led Martella to a nervous breakdown in 2005.

She began to see a therapist, and as she made progress, she leaned heavily on her writing for support.

“The month after I started therapy,” she said, “I started compiling a collection of my poems, which led me to write even more poems.”

Martella poured her tears and sadness into her work, writing about her father, her stillborn baby, the abuse—all of her life’s experiences.

The result is a book of published poems dedicated to readers “from broken homes and dysfunctional families” and those “molested as a child.” Martella states in her dedication, “Know that there is light at the end of that tunnel.”

And part of that light for Martella became the publication of her second work, this time a children’s book. Based on a happy experience with Martella’s 6-year-old daughter, the book is titled “Izabella and her Wardrobe.”

“My daughter was my inspiration,” Martella said. “She is quite the character, especially when it comes to her clothing.”

Martella’s goal is to write a ten-book series on various topics as Izabella grows older.

Both books, available at http://www.lulu.com/, are the expression of a caring woman dedicated to sharing her experiences with others on the path to healing.

As she writes in her book of poems, "Life isn’t always perfect; it’s what you make of it that counts.”

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Saying goodbye to Kent

2007-11-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

This column was published in November 2007 in the Tri-Valley Herald.

In 1964, when Diane Nelson was eight years old, she made friends with a 10-year-old neighbor named Kent, a boy she came to love, a man to whom one day she would have to say goodbye.

Their families lived along Mines Road, a rural area a few miles from downtown Livermore, which back then had just one grocery store and stoplight.

“He was a pudgy boy with wavy blonde hair and big white teeth,” said Diane, who still lives in Livermore. “And he had arms that would stretch out as if to announce himself to the world.”

In contrast, Diane was “a skinny little tadpole with asthma,” prompting Kent to nickname her Wheezy.

Diane said Kent came to Livermore to live with his mother after she gained custody of the boy from an abusive father.

The two new friends often played together, building forts or hiking along a creek. At times they even played with dolls, though sometimes this would send Kent running for home in tears.

“One day we’d be with Popeye on the high seas,” she said. “The next we’d spend with Mr. Spock on the starship Enterprise.” Kent was a natural comedian with a galaxy of voices and characters.

“I can still see my mom laughing as he told us about his vacation with his family and a run-in with a woman in a big yellow muumuu,” she said.

At such moments, Diane would struggle for air, pushing oxygen into her unwilling lungs to express the laughter building inside.

Older and stronger, Kent would swing his little friend in circles on a patio as she wore roller skates and clutched a rope and screamed. Other days they’d gather friends and dance as an old radio crackled out the Beatles and Rolling Stones.

Then there were horses. Kent’s horse was King, and Diane’s—a little gray pony with a sweeping tail—was Suzy.

“We’d gallop down both sides of old Mines Road,” she said. “King liked to kick Suzy, so I had to be careful not to get hit by a flying hoof.”

Through it all, Kent’s mischievous and curious presence transported Diane somewhere else, into someone else.

During their teen years, they drove an Oldsmobile—the purple bomb—owned by Kent’s stepfather. “It looked like a space ship with its pointed fins and bulging headlamps,” Diane said, “and its worn-out springs seemed to levitate us down the road.”

Sometimes, though, Kent would drive recklessly, one time reaching 100 miles an hour along Tesla Road.

When Diane was a high school freshman, Kent asked the skinny tomboy on their first date. “We hiked up a hill and used big rocks to spell out Kent + Diane so airplanes could read it,” she said.

She wore his class ring, and the two went steady. Once they even made a show of kissing when they knew Kent’s 4-year-old sister was watching.

But that’s all it really was: a show. And eventually they stopped going steady, stopped dating, because something inside Kent made it impossible to be more than friends.

At 19, Diane left home to search for life’s answers. She found herself living with Moonies in a chilly Victorian mansion in San Francisco. One day Kent showed up on her doorstep.

“He’d come to talk to me, to save me from the cult,” she said, “and though I didn’t leave right then, his visit made an impression on me, and eventually I left and made my way home.”

As years passed and she married, she heard he’d moved to San Francisco to seek his own answers. Then, in the mid-1980s, Kent’s 30 years of life was slashed apart by the knife of his boyfriend, perhaps out of anger or jealousy.

“I didn’t find out until after the funeral,” she said, her eyes deepening. “And I don’t know the details of his death.”

Still sad and angry that she didn’t get to say goodbye, if she could speak to Kent today, she would push oxygen into her lungs to express her yearning for a childhood long gone, a time when she’d knock on his door and ask in a small voice if Kent could come out and play.

“And then I’d tell him goodbye,” she said, “and to keep King and Suzy saddled, because one day we’ll gallop again together.”

.

English Class

2007-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Jim Ott's English Class at Las Positas College, Fall 2007

Hail to Halloween

2007-10-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

This column was published in the Herald the day before Halloween 2007.

When I was a boy, I took Halloween seriously.

My mom recalls that just after my eighth birthday during the first week of October, she reminded me to write thank-you notes for the gifts I received.

“I will,” I promised.

But two weeks later I hadn't written the notes, so she asked me about it.

“Oh Mom,” I said, “how can I write thank-you notes when I’m so busy planning my Halloween costume?”

What I loved about Halloween was the permission to become someone else, to try on different personalities, to dream outside my limitations and assume the profile of a monster, a hunchback, a president.

The year I dressed as Lincoln, I tried out my costume before Halloween by standing on a corner at the end of our block. With a top hat made from black construction paper, I wore my dad’s dark coat and an eye-pencil beard, and I waved to motorists who, after doing a double-take at a pint-sized Abe, waved back.

As a mummy, I wrapped myself in torn sheets, then walked stiff-legged into my sister’s room to conduct a pre-Halloween fright test.

My Frankenstein success one year led to my Dracula triumph the next. My inspiration came from Boris Karloff movies and a stack of monster magazines I adored.

Through it all I discovered my love of drama and illusion. I learned to be resourceful, to use elements of my costumes from one year to the next. And I learned that although I loved playing a selected role in the evening theater of Halloween, I was always content to wake up the next day as myself.

And by the way, not once—as I read some years ago in a letter to the editor—did the earliest origins of Halloween send a satanic spirit to whisper into my ear.

In fact, the first time I read my own words in a daily newspaper was two decades ago when I wrote a letter respectfully disagreeing with a woman who’d written to say that Halloween should be abolished because it encourages the devil and pagan rites.

What’s often overlooked is that in the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saints' Day to honor Christian saints and martyrs and to replace the pagan harvest celebrations. This celebration was preceded by an evening of bonfires, parades, and dressing up as saints, angels, and, yes, devils.

So our modern day Halloween is derived from an evening grounded as much in Christian celebration as in pagan ritual. For youngsters, such discussion is just grown-ups overanalyzing a fun evening.

And fun is what the children from Dublin’s Happy Talkers and School of Imagination will be having this Halloween when they don their costumes and join Dublin city staff at city hall.

“Mayor Janet Lockhart has arranged for her staff to celebrate Halloween with our children,” said Mitch Sigman, who with his wife Charlene and a team of speech pathologists, teachers, and therapists provides care for youngsters with mental, physical and developmental disabilities. “With city hall decked out for the celebration and the staff in costumes, our children will trick or treat together.”

This is what Halloween is all about—the fun and freedom of stepping beyond our limitations, of gathering and sharing candy with friends, and of becoming anyone we dream to be.

Terror in a Russian Cornfield

2007-10-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Herald in October 2007.

When Marina Strong moved to the Tri-Valley from Russia ten years ago, she couldn’t understand a certain habit of Americans.

“Everyone was always smiling,” said Strong, her accent and blue eyes reflecting her Russian heritage. “I wasn’t used to this. It’s not that we weren’t happy in Russia. We were. Eventually I came to enjoy the smiles of Americans.”

Strong, who lives in Pleasanton with her American husband and son, recently reminisced about growing up in a beautiful region of Moscow. Among her memories is a visit from Fidel Castro to her elementary school , and the fear she shared with fellow students that Ronald Reagan might start a nuclear war.

“We made posters at school begging Mr. Reagan not to push the button,” she said. “We were all afraid.”

Another memory—one she will never forget—involves an evening when Strong was 12. She and her friends, Galina and Angelica, got up the courage to ride their bikes to secretly harvest a few ears of corn from a field just behind a forest, near the Moscow River, a place forbidden to young girls.

“Boys went there all the time,” Strong said. “So we three, we gallant three, decided to go.”
It was the last day of a summer vacation spent flying kites and riding bikes.

“That summer we three were the whole world,” she said. “We were the three princesses in The Firebird, the three who battled the witch Baba Yaga, the Troika.”

Strong described her friend Galina as “a smart and brutally honest preteen, tall with a boyish haircut and hot temper who liked to argue about little things.”

Angelica was “a romantic girl with wavy black hair and blue eyes who made the boys quiet when she walked into a room.”

And Strong? She was “the glue that held our trio together whenever misunderstanding or jealousy lurked,” she said.

The cornfield was large and the stalks were high, with a grassy-fresh smell. The corn was irregular, grown as cattle feed, so the girls would have to search for the larger, ripe ears.

They left their bikes near the road and moved deeper into the field, chatting nervously.

“I remember asking Angelica if she’d gotten a call from an older boy we’d recently met from Denmark who was going to start at our school the next day,” Strong said. “He had bubblegum—which was rare in Russia—and all girls were already dreaming about him.”

Galina was suspicious that the boy’s gum was just a lure, and told Angelica he was just leading her on.

Angelica disagreed, saying he was kind and tall, wore knit shirts, and was not rude like other boys.

“I remember dusk had fallen and I was dreaming about that handsome boy,” said Strong, “wondering why he hadn’t thought of me when, suddenly, a scream broke my fantasy.” She looked to see Galina’s hand pointing, her mouth open, the color leaving her face.

It was a body, and the girls could see his boots in the dirt.

“We gave a quick look at each other, then at the boots,” Strong said. “They were black and dirty, in an odd position.”

Without speaking, the girls knew he'd been dead for days. They dropped the corn, forgot about their bikes, and ran.

Strong’s thoughts raced along with her legs. “I thought he must have been killed for stealing the corn. It was a prohibited place, and I thought if I survived this, I’d be grounded forever.”

When she got home, she said nothing to her parents and couldn’t sleep that night. The next day, Strong met her friends at recess.

“We secretly discussed the murder scene,” she said, “and whether to notify the police.”

The girls decided to go back, and if the bikes were gone, they’d report the stolen bikes and the dead body. If they found the bikes, they'd then decide what to do next.

“After school, we took a bus to the field,” Strong said. “It was quiet. The bikes were where we left them. But what about the body?”

Strong and her friends wanted to do the right thing, to be brave, so they began to search. But they couldn’t remember where the body was. So they searched all afternoon.

“And then we saw them,” she said. “The old black boots.” But the boots were not in the dirt. They were on a full-grown man, weightless, hovering a few inches from the ground.

“We started to laugh,” said Strong, her face breaking into one of those smiles she now enjoys. “The man was just a scarecrow.”

Catching up with Hammett

2007-10-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

This column appeared in the Herald on October 2.

Let’s try something fun in my column today.

My wife and I recently read, and enjoyed, “The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled detective novel published in 1930. Many people are reading the book thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Called “The Big Read,” this national initiative is designed to restore reading to the center of America culture.

So to have a little fun as I share what I’ve learned about the author and his work, I’m writing the rest of this column in the black and white prose style of Hammett. Here we go:

I stepped through the door into the television studio. The lights glared as TV30’s able cameraman adjusted chairs on the set.

Suddenly, stepping from a shadow in the corner, there she was: a brunette in lipstick and heels. She held a thumbed over copy of Hammett’s book.

“Hello Jim,” she said, removing her glasses. “Ready to tape another show?”

“Sure,” I said, holding up my own copy of Hammett’s masterpiece.

She was Kathy Cordova, a woman who’d seen the inside of scores of books and interviewed dozens of authors on “In A Word,” the show we host together on Tri-Valley Community Television Channel 30.

This day, as long as the cops didn’t bust down the doors, we’d be discussing “The Maltese Falcon.” Joining us were two guests: Mark Coggins, a Hammett expert and detective fiction writer; and Hailey Lind, author of “Brush with Death.”

Sure, I learned a lot about Hammett that day, and you’d be smart to tune in to watch the show. But

I’ve learned even more since then. Here’s just a taste:

Hammett was born on a farm in Maryland in 1894. He quit school at 14 to go to work. In 1915, he was hired on at Pinkerton’s National Detective Service, where the whittled-down prose of the reports he wrote foreshadowed his later fiction.

In 1918, he did what most all-American boys did and joined the army to fight the war to end all wars. But he never got overseas. Instead he drove an ambulance at Camp Mead, Maryland. He was discharged honorably due to a bout with tuberculosis.

After moving to Frisco in 1921, he started penning short stories at the public library. He sent one to H.L. Mencken. Sure enough, it was published, and as they say, a writer was born.

“The Maltese Falcon,” in 1930, was Hammett’s second novel.

While Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot preceded Sam Spade, Hammett gets the credit for transforming the well-mannered detective story for American audiences.

In Hammett’s hands, the detective story took on an urban toughness, uttered through a prose style of slang and grit and realism. The motivations of a detective like Spade are often questionable, since his choices seem at once both selfish and altruistic.

Hammett’s 80 short stories and five novels are part of the fabric of American literature and culture. Every novel has been made into a movie. The most famous, of course, is John Huston’s 1941 “The Maltese Falcon” starring Humphrey Bogart, the film most credited with launching the Film Noir era in Hollywood.

Now, before I pull this page from my typewriter, toss it onto my editor’s desk, and walk off into the evening in search of another column idea, I want to illuminate for you knowledge-starved readers what I learned about the term “hardboiled detective.” Popularized by that great newspaperman Damon Runyon, a detective is hardboiled when he—or she—is fundamentally a good egg, but hard on the outside.

Who knew?

For information about the many events taking place in October to commemorate “The Big Read,” visit the Pleasanton Library www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us, or drop by Towne Center Books in Pleasanton. For TV listings of “In a Word” on Comcast or via webcast, visit www.tv30.org.