Category: Carol
End of an Era
Marc and Carol are moving from SF to Reno, leaving the apartment they found by happy accident on Union St. When they stopped to have pizza nearby as they scouted for temporary living quarters as Marc had signed up to work for Hood Miller.
Interestingly, this marks the end of their THIRD twenty year venue period focused in a single place :
- Columbus/Ohio
- [Mixed Navy, San Diego, Virginia for ten years]
- Boston
- San Francisco
- and now Reno
Dinner Club
Leslie, Paula and Andrea went and threw us a Dinner Club to remember.
The “Super Bowl Gang” make great company, lively talk and warm memories. Thanks for an extra nice send-off. We were totally surprised and just plain thrilled.
Love, Marc and Carol
Carol Retires
Preschool Program Coordinator
Early Childhood Education Center
San Francisco State University 1992 – 2012
On Wednesday, September 28, 2011, the Rockies beat the Giants 6-3 and Carol told Sarah she would retire as of June 1, 2012. At home that night, she said to me, “It’s time. You better practice having me around.”
Well, that was plenty of notice, but the weeks and months did pass and Associated Students of San Francisco State University decided to throw a big party for her. She is the first person ever to retire from AS. Later, we learned that Carol’s colleague Nahid, from the infant/toddler wing of the Young Children’s Education Center would share retirement and the party.
The party date was set for Friday, April 27th and it turned out to be a very strange and wonderful day for Carol. First, she was honored at the annual awards breakfast of SF Child Care Providers Association and presented with a certificate of recognition:
California Legislature Assembly
CERTIFICATE OF RECOGNITION
Carol Rector
ASI ECEC Program Director
Honoring exemplary leadership and outstanding commitment to the success and development of the children in California, helping them grow to their full potential while supporting parental involvement throughout their educational, and dedication to the both the children and their families, thereby benefiting all the people of the City & County of San Francisco and the State of California.
Assemblywoman Fiona Ma
Speaker pro Tempore
Presented April 27, 2012
When she got to the school, she was confined to her office, as secret party preparations were going on all over the place around her.
I arrived at the Center minutes after 5:30 and was greeted by Paula and Andrea then Matt and Andrea and Elias.
Meanwhile, Carol was being greeted by everybody. The party was outside in the school yard. Decorations were in abundance, really good food was offered along with bright red fruit punch. The weather was perfect, featuring 65 degrees and a bright setting sun. The yard was filled with over a hundred colleagues, parents and kids stretching back for many of Carol’s 20 years at the Center. Everyone was in a celebratory mood.
Sarah gave a marvelous introduction of the honorees and then many people came forward to offer their congratulations and remembrances — parents and former parents, former colleagues, former students and of course, officials. Fortunately, speechifying was limited to two-minutes each as the famous San Francisco weather lost its warmth and fresh breezes promised goose bumps. Continue reading “Carol Retires”
Carol’s Retirement Chair
Carol’s chair
KozyCoach
Alison and I just checked into our accommodations at El Cosmico in Marfa, TX. We can’t wait for our first night in a tin can!
Apparently, Carol sweared that Grandma Hughes lived in a Kozy Coach just like this one…
Another of the trailers for rent by the night at El Cosmico (the cubic shapes next to both trailers are the outdoor! showers):
Melancholia, a commentary
Melancholia
sffs directed by Lars von Trier November 2011
SFFS members are invited to a free member-only preview screening of Melancholia starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Keifer Sutherland. Melancholia is a psychological disaster film from director Lars von Trier.
Lars von Trier’s work that I have seen:
In 2000, von Trier premiered a musical featuring Icelandic musician Björk, Dancer in the Dark. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
He then directed two films in his announced ‘U.S. trilogy’: Dogville (2003), starring Nicole Kidman
In 2006, von Trier released a Danish-language comedy film, The Boss of it All.
Von Trier’s latest work is Melancholia, a psychological disaster drama;[26] shot between 22 July and 8 September 2010 at Film i Väst’s studios in Trollhättan, Sweden,[27] and with exteriors in the area surrounding the Tjolöholm Castle
About the film: In this beautiful movie about the end of the world, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). Despite Claire’s best efforts, the wedding is a fiasco, with family tensions mounting and relationships fraying. Meanwhile, a planet called Melancholia is heading directly towards Earth…
MY TAKE – When we left the theater Carol and I remarked to one another how excruciatingly long and slow that film was… seemingly hours of Claire dragging around that child and Justine wandering around that golf course. And yet we both thought that parts were beautiful and the acting of the main characters was brilliant.
Mick LaSalle’s review was in the Chronicle the next day. He had the little man sitting straight up, expressionless, which means GOOD.
(Full reviews at the end of this)
He starts —
If only Lars von Trier took into account that audiences might actually want to enjoy “Melancholia,” rather than endure it, or sift through it, or submit to the director’s will, he might have made something extraordinary. The film’s arresting concept, its deeply felt understanding of depression, and its glossy and surreal cinematography — like a Magritte painting — could have been the ingredients of a masterpiece.
and concludes with —
At this point, you might be wondering why, in a middling review, I’ve concentrated only on the good. (In fact, I haven’t the space to talk about all the strengths of “Melancholia”; for example, Kiefer Sutherland as Gainsbourg’s sardonic husband or Charlotte Rampling as Dunst’s and Gainsbourg’s vicious mother.) The reason is that all the virtues of “Melancholia” are original and interesting.?Meanwhile, its flaws are so typical and pedestrian that it’s difficult to sound intelligent mentioning them.?But it must be said: “Melancholia” is grindingly slow and endless, with scenes that go nowhere and long, long stretches of directorial indulgence. There is almost no tension and barely enough story to carry it to feature length, much less 2¼ hours.
Carol and I totally agreed. But then, I went and found Roger Ebert’s review, on line. He gave it 3 1/2 stars (out of 4). What’s up with that? Continue reading “Melancholia, a commentary”
College Football, WooHoo
Stanford Cardinal v. Washington Huskies
October 22, 2011
Stanford Football is not your big-time SEC or BIG 10 affair, but damn, it’s fun.
I’ve managed to go to a Stanford football game each year for the last 3. Love it.
2009 versus Oregon with Sarah, a normal and sunny afternoon game. I got tickets from the Stanford website and knowing nothing about the stadium, settled for upper deck, Row XX, above the student section. I discovered that in this 50,000 seat, newly remodeled stadium, there are no bad seats. Stanford won in a wild game 51-42, but it was not without thrills, as the Ducks mounted a 21 point comeback in the 4th quarter and were driving as the clock expired.
2010 versus Wake Forest with Carol, Paul and Kathleen, an 8pm start on general admission tickets, upper deck end zone, procured by Kathleen, who works at Stanford. Stanford kilt Wake 64-24.
July Adventure, Homeward Bound
The SAAB gets its fuel pump and we get on back to SF
In Reno, days passed and Brian went to work and we shopped and read and caught up on writing and ate some food and reveled in the usually perfect July weather experienced for the most part on Brian’s back deck.
At the Spa up north, Brian was reminded of the wonderfulness of his hot tub, but it has been out of order for a while. Brian so loves his hot tub. He gave me the job of finding a guy to fix it, and I made some calls. Yes, and there was a rainstorm…
and a spectacular sunset the day before the day of.
The day of was Thursday. I called Walton Car Care and they said they were installing my fuel pump and we could come for the car at any time. That’s just when the hot tub guy came to take a look at the offending tub. I hung around, standing in for Brian. Carol and I scheduled ourselves to leave at 10am for the 8 hour pick-up trip — three hours north, one there, three south and one whatever. Leaving a little later won’t kill us. The hot tub situation is fixable, not dire, but there are parts to order and what not.
We were on I-395 before eleven and after the hills and dales and wide roads getting out of Sparks and Reno, we settled on the straight and narrow to Alturas. Brian’s plans changed slightly… he’s going north on Friday, so Carol and I took his Sabaru and will leave it at Walton’s for him to pick up on Friday.
In these wide open spaces, it seems that the road is always straight, the land is always vast and the mountains are always in the distance. When you think you might get to the mountains, the road might bend a bit and go straight on by. This road is on the California side of the border. On the Nevada side, the sensation is similar, but the vast land is white and tan over there, as opposed to greenish and reddish over here. Empty, is what it’s like. We could go nearly an hour without seeing another car, or a person working in a field. On the other hand, its not the Wild West anymore. We travel about 200 miles, one way, seeing essentially nothing, but we do it in about 3 hours. Its not like traveling ten miles a day, walking behind a Calistoga wagon, or two or three days by horseback. Continue reading “July Adventure, Homeward Bound”
July Adventure, Up North
As Brian works his magic and the SAAB remains a situation.
We left before the car was loaded on the truck, feeling an extreme need to get on with our lives. We backtracked on CA-222 to Cedarville, where we turned south onto Surprise Valley Road. According to legend, Surprise Valley got its name from the surprise the pioneers felt when they came over the mountains after crossing hundreds of miles of desert to find a land of streams and green grass. As we get into open country, the road is called Modoc County Route 1.
Brian alerted me as we approached the California Nevada border, and since there was not a vehicle in sight, we stopped to closely observe the border crossing. The California road we’ve been driving on has been resurfaced very recently… doesn’t even have lines yet. Land alongside is privately owned and fenced. Land in Nevada where the route changes name to NV-447, is open range, where sagebrush proliferates, and not privately owned. The border is where the white traffic lines start and fences end.
We pressed on for a while; time passed and miles were traveled. Brian said, “see that pointy peak way up ahead? That’s Granite Peak, it caps the Granite Range at 9080 feet. That’s where we’re going. My study site is in the shadow of Granite Peak when the sun is low in the morning. We have a ways to go.”
Time passed and miles were traveled. Just around that bend and downhill is Brian’s Study Site where we’ll stop and have a look.
Brian has “6 sites in NE California & NW Nevada, with 6 transects/site (3 transects in thick medusahead and 3 not; each transect has 6 cups, of which 3 are open at any given time.” He showed me one non-medusahead transect. Continue reading “July Adventure, Up North”
RectorSite 