The Moral of the Story

I almost didn’t go. Here’s what would have happened had I not gone:
The situation that almost held me back from going would have unfolded anyway – it is still unfolding – and I would have missed two big events. I would have missed standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean while reunioning with my AHS Class of ’61 pals in Lincoln City, Oregon, and coming home to a memorable Welcome Home party.
Standing at the edge of the Pacific

Welcome Home

Despite having grown up as an Air Force brat and lived a bunch of places, I’ve only stood at the edge of or seen the Pacific Ocean once before, in San Diego, where the Pacific’s sanguine nature lures even the most timid of temperaments. The Pacific of the Oregon coast can be phlegmatic, boisterous, hostile, even angry. Only the bold venture beyond the beauty of its shoreline.
First, what is unfolding: I mentioned in my last post that on September 1 last year a cold-contact e-mail popped into my in-box, from some stranger in Austria, which I almost deleted. Thank goodness I didn’t, as that one e-mail has led me, my sister, Susan, and my cousin Emory on a fantastic journey to discover the real story behind my father’s World War II bailout over the Alps, the plane’s crash, and dad’s eventual survival. There will be lots and lots more to come on that story.
Second, I would have missed our mini-reunion in Oregon. The year before, June 2011, the AHS Class of ’61 held its 50^th high school reunion in Anchorage, Alaska. A group of us from the lower 48, many from the West Coast, met in Vancouver, Canada, to begin a cruise to Anchorage via Alaska’s magnificent Inside Passage to Seward where we boarded a bus to the reunion. Last year I had a lot to say about that.
And third, Joanna Leigh had a wonderful surprise party waiting for me when I got home. I walked in the house at 8 p.m. from the Birmingham airport. She threw open the door from the kitchen to the dining room, and THERE IT ALL WAS, in all its splendor. My husband said she had gotten started on this surprise on Saturday after I left on Thursday. She had roamed around the dining room in the china cabinets, buffet, drawers, everywhere. And VOILA.



She had decorated with silver, china, crystal, the cake plate, these funky footed cupcake holders, a Happy Birthday Princess banner I had used at her birthday party, ribbons, her bandana, you name it. The whole scene was topped off with her Dora umbrella sticking out of my grandmother’s silver water pitcher. She embellished everything, like putting princess and fairy stickers on the crystal wine glasses. And a present from me that she had gotten on Monday at her ballet store: A DIAMOND bracelet in a gift sack.

She is a Priss Pot, embellisher, accessorizer, decorator, none of which she gets from me. Honest.
Then came the scary part. Bright and early Thursday, 7:30 a.m., after finally getting home late Wednesday night from Portland, I had to go in for an appointment with my internist. Oh, shit, I thought. What is he going to find in my system?
I really didn’t want to have to get on blood pressure or cholesterol medicine, but I knew he’d put me on it if I really flunked bad. So, I had it all mapped out what I would say. “Look, about the blood alcohol level, the weight gain, the cholesterol, my blood pressure. . . .”
“Yes,” he said, “your numbers are great. You’ve dropped 50 points on your cholesterol, lost a few pounds. . . .” I sat there dumbfounded. “What do you attribute this to” he asked. I sat there.
Then I said, “Well, laughing my head off for five days in Oregon.” What else could I say? I am NOT making this up.
The moral of the story is: If you want to shine in your internist’s office, go somewhere fabulous to meet up with old friends; then eat, drink, and laugh. It works wonders.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Ocean,reunions,grandparents parenting,Oregon coast,Lincoln City

23.5 Degrees

Oh, the words we eat. And eat. And eat.

A hungry friend at a Juneau salmon bake on Gold Creek.

It must be sometime in the recent past (because I remember it) that I last said, “Me, on a cruise to Alaska? Never. I go to Alaska to get out in it. You can’t get out in it on a cruise.”
If words were delectable, life for me would have been a gourmet feast. Yes, I ate the words and went on a wonderful cruise up Alaska’s Inside Passage. The food was delectable, the service unbeatable, and the ship a floating resort.

Every night a gourmet feast on The Radiance of the Seas, a floating 13-story resort.

Looking down at the main lobby bar from the 7th floor of the ship.

If you want to see Alaska’s Inside Passage, which has no roads and no rail lines from one stop to the next, you’re going to have to go by water; unless you have your own float plane, you need to take the Alaska ferry or a cruise. If you’re young and adventurous, you can take a sleeping bag and sleep on the deck of the ferry. Then when it drops you off in Skagway or Haines, you’re on your own.
Take the cruise.

The Radiance of the Seas docked at Icy Strait’s Tlingit community Hoonah.

Why see the Inside Passage in particular? Because Alaska’s southeastern “panhandle” is different from the other FIVE Alaskas. Yes, Alaska is big enough to have six huge sections that are all unlike each other.

The other five are the Gulf Coast (south central), including Anchorage, the Kenai peninsula and Seward, and Prince William Sound; the south western Peninsula and Aleutian Chain, which reaches out some 1,500 miles toward Asia and is the boundary between the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea; the Bering Sea coast, which is a relatively harsh, sparsely populated, cold and windy flatland; the Great Interior, the vast land (almost 170,000 square miles) between the Brooks Range on the north – the entrance to the Arctic – and the Alaska Range to the south, including Denali, Fairbanks, the Yukon River, and tundra, lots of tundra; and finally, the Arctic, from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean, before going to which, I suggest you read John McFee’s Coming into the Country and bone up on your courage.

Rule One
In all six sections, there’s only one rule: In Alaska, Nature rules. Period. Break that rule at your own peril. Alaska is a land of extremes that range from incomparable beauty to dangerous hostility. It is all light and all dark -- because of the 23.5 degree tilt of the Earth on its axis.

In the summer, Alaska looks the Sun in the eye; in winter, the land can be as dark as blindness. Our ship, Radiance of the Seas, cruised us to Seward just in time to get to Anchorage for the nearly 24-hour daylight of the summer solstice. Alaskans will tell you that by the end of the summer, they are very tired.

Susitna, “The Sleeping Lady,” as seen from an Anchorage hotel, about 2 a.m.

As is true for all of Alaska, the Inside Passage is a gourmet feast for the senses -- in high def. It must be the closeness to the sun or clearness of the atmosphere, but the light that bears down on Alaska, clarifying the colors as if sent through a prism, might burn like a laser were it not for the clouds and rain. On a clear day, each color is saturated, it seems to its limit.
On cloudy rainy days, of which there are many along the Inside Passage, the blue-green backdrop seems to enhance the colors of the small communities built along the coast. Mountain ranges don’t allow these communities any depth, and the streets of some are built on pilings over the water.

Above: Juneau (top) and Ketchikan,  where the coast road is built on pilings over the water.

Not only is the Inside Passage different from the other Alaskas, the views along the passage change, gradually transforming from a softness at the southern end, including Ketchikan, to a majestic, rugged beauty at the northern end, including Yukatat, Hubbard Glacier, Prince William Sound, and Seward.

Hubbard Glacier in Disenchantment Bay.
I remembered James A. Michener’s description of the birth and death of glaciers in his 1988 novel Alaska. I tracked it down:
If the valley down which the glacier came ended at the shoreline, the towering face of ice would come right to the edge of the ocean, where in due time, fragments of the glacier, sometimes as big as cathedrals, sometimes bigger, would break away with resounding cracks that would reverberate through the air for many miles as the resulting iceberg crashed into the ocean, where it would ride as an independent entity for months and even decades. Then it became a thing of majestic beauty, with sunlight glistening on its towering spires, with waves playing about its feet, and with birds saluting it as they sped by.

Hubbard Glacier, closer.

Different cruise lines may choose different port stops along the Passage. Most will include Ketchikan at the southern end.

Ketchikan’s hillside community.

Other possible stops include one on Prince of Wales Island, then the communities of Wrangel, Petersburg, Juneau, Haines, Skagway, Hoonah on Icy Strait, Gustavas, and Seward. Most will cruise near a powerful glacier. Once the ship exits through Icy Strait, it leaves the relative safety of the fjords and is in the open waters of the Gulf of Alaska, where the temperature can drop from around 65 degrees Fahrenheit in June/July to 5 or 10 degrees less (or more, depending on whether the sun is out or behind clouds). Alongside a glacier, it is cold, really cold.

All the beauty belies that lying in wait underneath is a dangerous harshness. The few people who live along the Passage know not to break Nature’s rules; they learn to live with the beauty, the land, the waters and wildlife, as well as with awareness of the dangers.

Hoonah, a fish packing community, is home for native Tlingits, who know how to live with Alaska’s harshness.

See more photos of the Radiance of the Seas and of the Inside Passage here.

Technorati Tags: Alaska's Inside Passage,Inside Passage cruise,Royal Caribbean,Radiance of the Seas,Hubbard Glacier,Ketchikan,Juneau,Hoonah,James A. Michener's Alaska,Tlingit,Susitna

Senior Pictures, Pictures of Seniors

Summertime! Water fun, weddings, backyard cookouts, trips to the mountains, fireflies, even noctilucent clouds (which you can find out about at www.spaceweather.com). And graduation, which means U.S. high schools and colleges putting gazillions of seniors out on the streets.

It’s also the season for one of America’s great pastimes – no, not baseball. Reunions.

Reunions come in all kinds, sizes, and shapes -- like school classes, families, all kinds of military gatherings including fighter pilot aces, athletes celebrating a special win. Name a meaningful past event or cohorts; people will get together.

Reunions are also big business in America and generate tons of summertime spending; I’ll do my part in a few days to stimulate the economy by contributing more than my share to this business segment.

Yet, there’s a major reason to go, a reason based on some little-known research. That secret will be revealed at the end of the post.

AHS Senior Class of ‘61

I first heard the silly joke, “What’s the difference between senior pictures and pictures of seniors?” when my father told me he was going to his 50^th high school reunion. I thought it was way over the top back then. (The answer to that stupid joke will be at the bottom of this post.)

Some people would rather be shot at dawn than have to attend their class reunion.

Well, I’m risking it all and going to mine. In Anchorage. That’s Anchorage, Alaska. By way of the Inside Passage on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas, a cruise put together by a few classmates. There will be about 30-plus of us on board. I haven’t seen these classmates in 20 years, since our 30^th reunion.

I leave Thursday to get on board. I’ve sent my money in. If I drop dead before next Thursday, well, I won’t live to regret it.

We will join lots of other classmates Friday, June 17, at (West) Anchorage High School, to begin our 50^th Reunion. Over the top, alright.

We’ve had a lot of fun working on this Reunion for two years, some of us communicating electronically with the core committee in Anchorage. The work shows in the Web page, at www.ahs61.com.

A few days ago with a temperature here in Tuscaloosa at 101 degrees and my AC merely chugging along, I went to Belk to continue my spending by getting a few things. I couldn’t find them.

“Where are the socks?” I asked a couple of salespeople.

They were speechless, looking at me like I was a mental case. “I’m going to Alaska!” I added.

“Oh! They’re over there,” they replied.

Gravity Happens

Why -- looking like I look, missing all the opportunities for success I’ve missed, feeling totally inferior, not remembering stuff I should remember, having just had “procedures” I don’t want to discuss – why would I put myself through a REUNION? Yes, there’s that secret reason to be revealed at the end. But what about the CONCERNS?

Here’s my take on the CONCERNS:

Many had a tough time in high school. Here’s what I say to that: Who didn’t! We were teenagers. Give me a teenager who didn’t have a tough time and I’ll give you a corpse. Teenagers and psychopaths and sociopaths probably share many personality traits.

Many grownups still feel the sting of real or perceived affronts to their esteem. Here’s what I say to that: Who doesn’t? And let me say right here: If I committed an affront to any of my high school peers, I am most sorry for it. My excuse is that like everyone in high school, I was insane and busy dealing with the affronts aimed at me.

Regarding having suffered from an inferiority complex. Ha! This is what I say to that: I still am. Descartes should have said, “I feel inferior; therefore, I am.”

Many seniors don’t recognize the person in the mirror. I don’t, and I’m sure no one will recognize me. It’s all about gravity, pounds, bad hair color, baldness, wrinkles, dysfunctional knees and sexual prowess, bags, walkers, and whatever else we’ve added to our lives. Here’s what I say to that: It’s true. Most people won’t recognize you anymore than you’ll recognize them.

Get over it; the name tags will be HUGE.

Some will fear scorn for their fuzzy or no “accomplishments.” Here’s what I say to that: As long as we’re breathing, we’ll all continue to have to re-start our lives – for the zillionth time. I just had to re-start mine three years ago when my husband (miraculously, of 40 years) and I petitioned for and adopted our 18-month-old granddaughter.

We ALL remember envying other classmates’ looks, brains, boobs or other endowments, status in the “in crowd,” athletic heroics, scores on the SAT test, and a zillion other things. Here’s what I say to that: I envied Teresa Hanson’s pink Ford Victoria convertible. And Ginger Harris’s confidence. And Tom Kelly’s SAT scores. There, I’ve said it. But I’m going to attend anyway.

No Regrets

So we will come together for our 50^th high school reunion – because we CAN. We’ve been given the gift of surviving long enough to have this opportunity. Seeing noctilucent clouds will just be gravy.

Those who will see their close friends, those who didn’t know each other, those who only knew each other as acquaintances – we all share this singular opportunity. All of us shared that one moment when the AHS door opened graduation night for us to begin our journey to adulthood. We all helped each other get to that point, for good or ill.

The AHS Senior Class Prom, 1961. Both the King and Queen, sitting in the chairs, will be at our 50th High School Reunion.

And finally, the main reason, a best kept secret revealed in a New York Times piece two years ago:

“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”

ANSWER TO THE OPENING QUESTION:

As far as we, the AHS Class of ’61, are concerned, there’s NO DIFFERENCE between senior pictures and pictures of seniors.

Technorati Tags: Anchorage High School,Senior Class of '61,AHS Class of '61,50th high school reunion,reunions,Inside Passage cruise,senior pictures,Senior Class Prom,graduation 1961

“Stand By Me” to the 40th Power

In the 40+ years since the release of Ben E. King’s break-out 1968 hit “Stand By Me,” it has become an anthem for the best kinds of friendship and love. The song has been used and used and used in all kinds of ways, and one of the best uses was Rob Reiner’s film of the same name, which was based on, of all things, a Stephen King novella, “The Body.” Here’s the trailer for it; watch as much or as little as you wish. It has gotten more than 800,000 hits.

 

But it took a particular video clip to add a memorable facet to the song. If you get e-mail, you likely got this. I got it from a high school buddy with whom I’m working long distance to make our 50^th high school reunion a huge success. Yes, 50^th high school reunion, a really over the top event. His idea is to use the song as a theme.

King described how “Stand By Me” came to be in “What’d I Say”: The Atlantic Story by Ahmet Ertegum, Welcome Rain Publishers, 2001:

At the same session where I recorded “Spanish Harlem,” we had about half an hour left and were sitting around with nothing to do. Jerry [Leiber] and Mike [Stoller] asked me if I had any songs, so I said I had one called ‘Stand By Me’. . . . They said, ‘Okay, let’s hear it.’

A Pandemic

Here’s “going viral” at its best. A YouTube Playing for Change version has gotten more hits than there are people in the whole state of Florida (according to 2009 estimates, 18.5 million) -- almost 20 million hits! Astonishing. And that’s on YouTube alone. It’s also on Vimeo. It was also sent around the globe by e-mail.

This wonderfully touching Playing for Change video of Grandpa Elliott Small singing a musical mashup performance of King’s “Stand by Me” was recorded from New Mexico to South Africa. You should watch the whole clip, for sometimes the good stuff just keeps getting better.

 

A recent Associated Press story updated Grandpa Elliot, which ran in many newspapers, including this one in the April 22 edition of the New York Times, which quoted Small telling how he felt to be a part of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival last weekend. The Festival runs through this weekend.

Hail, Rock 'n Roll.

 

Technorati Tags: Stand By Me,Ben E. King,Rob Reiner,Spittin' Grits,"What'd I Say ": The Atlantic Story,Grandpa Elliott Small,New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

About the Blogette

After retiring from a twenty-five-year career at The University of Alabama, I quickly unretired. My professional experience included working as a senior writer/editor in the Office of University Relations, manager of communications in the Office of Educational Development, adjunct English instructor of composition and literature, and freelance writer.

As an unretiree, I and my husband of 40 years-plus are parenting grandparents of our (now) six-year-old granddaughter whom we have formally adopted. Reasons you might expect required our becoming parenting grandparents: our daughter’s unrelenting drug addictions, the situation that motivated my decision to begin my blog, Spittin’ Grits.

Two circumstances built the framework of my life: First, I grew up a military brat in the U.S. Air Force. That lifestyle widened my view and broadened my understanding. My father flew P-51 Mustangs in World War II. He was shot down over the Alps, survived, was captured and taken to a POW camp in Germany. He remained in the U.S.A.F. as a career officer. His influence on me is immeasurable.

Second, I spent my formative high school years in Anchorage, Alaska where my father was stationed; I graduated from Anchorage High School in 1961. Alaska is oversized, outrageous, and above all, spiritual. The AHS class of ’61 held its 50^th reunion in 2011. A 50^th reunion seems over the top, but I was there.

I welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. Obscene, profane, abusive and off-topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for abiding by these rules and for taking part.

About Spittin’ Grits

_© Maggie Mae and Patty Cake napping. They are now five years older, but, like most women can be, continue to be very close friends. They are also close friends with our two-year-old granddaughter.

Spittin’ Grits_©, from Joanna Cravey Hutt, presents observations, beliefs, and information about topics including (but not limited to): Grits, Grandparents Parenting and Toddler Whisperings, Drug Addiction, Funny Bones, Politics, Reunions (I have been to a few), Southern Stuff, Travels, and Words and Language. Some lives turn out pretty much as expected. A lot of mine is not what the script called for. As I ad libbed my way through the surprises, amazements, shocks, disappointments, I learned some stuff, which inspired me to create Spittin’ Grits_©.

Why these subjects? I know grits and Southern stuff from having lived only in Alabama since 1961 when I entered The University of Alabama; my husband (of nearly 40 years) and I are raising our (now) six-year-old granddaughter because of our daughter’s nearly lifelong, intractable drug addictions; as a retired writer, editor, adjunct English instructor, and freelance writer, I have worked with words and language all of my professional life. Other topics reveal interests.

            Welcome to my thoughts and experiences. Some will be more personal than others, particularly those posts on drug addiction, which I have come to know because of my daughter’s addictions. Some will be informative, I hope, which contributes to my goal of sharing what I have learned. Some will just BE.

            Thank you for visiting. I hope you will return, comment, and tell others about Spittin Grits_©. Comments must be civil, short and to the point. Obscene, profane, abusive and off-topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for abiding by these rules and for taking part. 

Spittin’ Grits is a registered trademark and is the sole property of Joanna C. Hutt. Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.