She'll never forget ...

I got caught up in the saga of the ghost kitty and neglected to post this image of my nephew Mike and his niece, Milagros, with the gigantic plush elephant I gave her for Christmas. Her mother tells me that Milagros, who is 4, totes it around through the house, sleeps with it and uses it for a pillow when she's napping on the couch.

I gave my great nephew Carlos, who is 7, a simple digital camera for Christmas. After a rough start -- the memory card that came with it didn't work -- Carlos has been taking lots of pictures. Among them, pictures of his feet, pictures of what's up his nose, pictures of trees, pictures of his sister, and pictures of cartoon shows on TV.

We had dinner together Wednesday night. He had already taken more than 450 pictures in three days, and he fired away all through the meal.

I asked him to pick out the one he likes best this weekend and send it to me. I'll post the image as soon as he passes it along.

I hope it's not the one he shot up his nose. His mother hopes it's not the one he took of her bottom. She told me she was going to delete that one.

The saga of the ghost kitty

Lord knows, I hope I haven't snatched away a non-lost cat.

I don't think I have. But it's possible.

Regular readers might recall that, on Dec. 7, I posted about the "ghost kitty" who had started to hang out in the neighborhood. She's a beautiful cat, obviously tame and loving. But nobody on my block admitted to knowing who she was or to whom she belonged. Several of the neighbors said they had taken pity on her and fed her.

She seemed to like to sit on my deck or lounge in the back yard in the sunlight. She would come up to me whenever I went out on the deck and rub against my legs, wordlessly asking to be loved. She would let me pick her up and hold her without struggling. She purred loudly.

This went on for some weeks, during which time it became clear that she was slowly losing weight.

On Christmas Eve day, after much thought, I gave her a small cat-bowl of dry food and a small bowl of water. Was it the season that led me to feed her? Perhaps.

Over the course of the next half hour, she ate a full bowl of food -- more than my cat, Cassie, eats in three days -- and she drank half of the bowl of water.

I lined a cardboard box with a towel, cut a small door in the box, and put it on the deck. There were traces of cat fur in it on Christmas morning, so I suspect she used it as a bed for at least a portion of the night.

On Christmas day, I again put out a full bowl of cat food and filled the water dish. The ghost kitty came running. She again ate a full bowl of food and drank half the water.

We have a fairly elaborate e-mail tree in our neighborhood, so I sent out a message on Christmas afternoon, along with the picture you see above, asking if anybody knew this cat or where she might live. One of the recipients posted the message and the picture to a Yahoo! group devoted to lost pets on Richmond's Northside.

On the day after Christmas, I again fed the ghost kitty and gave her fresh water. She ate and drank well, but she didn't finish her bowl of food. Perhaps she was feeling less of a need to stuff herself.

Then the e-mail responses to my lost-cat notice began to pour in. There was lots of good advice. And there were two people who actually wanted to do something. I couldn't bring the ghost kitty into my house because Cassie has a chronic upper-respirator infection, and my vet and the specialist vets who diagnosed Cassie advised me that she was both potentially contagious to other cats and more susceptible to infections that don't seriously bother other cats.

Last evening I petted the ghost kitty for a while, mostly to say goodbye, then put her in my carrier. Twenty minutes later, Jennifer, one of those who volunteered to help, came by to pick her up and give her a warm home for the night. Acting on instructions given to us by a representative of Richmond's Cat Adoption and Rescue Effort, Jennifer dropped the ghost kitty off at a local vet, where she was examined, scanned to see if she had a microchip, tested for several cat diseases and given a few standard vaccinations.

As of right now, the beautiful and sweet ghost kitty is in the hands of a CARE volunteer and will be safely looked after until a home for her can be found.

The ghost kitty now has a new name, Daisy, given to her by the CARE volunteer.

My thanks go to the selfless people who decided to act when they got word that there was a cat who needed care.

And I wish Daisy much love as she begins a new adventure.

A friend of mine calls this group rescue effort a tiny Christmas miracle.

Perhaps it was.

All wrapped up for Christmas

My favorite Christmas song was written in the middle of a hot summer by a Jew. At the time, I was coming up on 2 years old.

The title is "The Christmas Song" -- catchy, no? -- and it was written in 1944 by Mel Torme. You probably know it as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."

(I spent Thanksgiving in Manhattan some years back. As we were walking towards Rockefeller Center I asked my friend Walter, "What's that odd smell?" He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. A block or so later we passed a man on the street who was working over a charcoal grill. Walter asked me, "Is that what you're smelling?" The man was roasting and selling chestnuts. They didn't smell all that tasty to me. Nonetheless, I still love the song.)

"The Christmas Song" was playing on the radio as I started wrapping presents yesterday. I had done all my Christmas shopping -- most of it online -- within the first week after Thanksgiving. But I had put off the wrapping, primarily because I'm not very good at it.

But yesterday I dragged out the box of wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, scotch tape, scissors, pens and tags that I have accumulated and replenished over the past four decades and set to work. Only one of the presents I bought actually came in a box suitable for wrapping. The rest were of odd sizes and shapes and were a struggle. Cassie chasing ribbons and getting in the middle of things was no help either.

Most of the presents are for the little kids in the family, and I suspect they won't even notice my feeble attempts. And I think I did well enough to avoid any arched eyebrows from the grownups. Maybe, anyway.

So all the work is done, and what's left is the enjoyment.

Watching the kids open their presents tomorrow morning will bring the most delight of the season for me. And that's what it's all about for me -- kids and spreading joy.

So I'm offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two
Although it's been said many times, many ways
Merry Christmas to you

Christmases Past

Everything about this tiny artificial tree brings back memories of Christmases past for me.

I inherited it from my mom.

When my sister Dianne and I were little kids, our parents bought and decorated a live Christmas tree each year after we had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. In our family, it was "Santa" who decorated the tree and left it surrounded by presents.

This was in the first decade after World War II. I have no idea where my dad bought a presentable Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and it wasn't until years later that I realized Christmas trees were heavily discounted on the night before Christmas. It makes sense to me now. Money was in short supply when my parents were young.

After Dianne and I were disabused of the notion of a jolly fat man who came down the chimney to deliver presents to all good little boys and girls -- our chimney led not to a fireplace but to a furnace, although that concept never bothered me when I was 6 years old -- the whole family took to picking out the perfect tree a week before Christmas. Decorating it became a family affair.

Later still, when Dianne and I had moved out on our own, my mom and dad acquired the little artificial tree you see above. But they kept some of the ornaments that used to adorn the big, live trees each year. And they kept many of the things you see beneath the tree in the image above. This year, the tree sits on my dining room table.

Dianne, my mother and my father are all gone now. But I carry on the tradition, and it always brings back happy memories.

Dianne needle-pointed the Happy Holidays ornament you see at the dead center. One of the red ornaments is an early-plastic decoration that probably dates back to 1946. My grandmother crocheted the star image that hangs on a lower branch. The tiny animals always hung high on the live trees from my childhood; they were my mother's favorites.

Beneath the tree is a collection of plastic cars and trucks from my childhood. The little blue bench was part of the setup for the Lionel train I got in 1951. (I imagine that's supposed to be the Baby Jesus sitting on the bench, but I have no recollection of where that little naked figure came from.) The white plastic house and the red plastic church have been under our trees since before I can remember.

I bring out this little tree each year, and after Christmas I wrap it carefully -- still decorated -- and put it away until the next December.

Christmas is a time for memories, for recalling the past and for making new memories for the children in our families. Tacky is trumped by nostalgia.

I decided long ago that this is a good thing.

Tradition is to be accorded great respect.

Adding oomph

All it took was 50 cents worth of red bows.

They added enough pizzazz to my bowl of blue ornaments to make the whole living room look much more like Christmas.

In my last post, I talked about the lack of oomph in my attempt at Christmas cheer. A friend said the bowl full of blue ornaments looked too minimalist, too much like what a fastidious designer might do. He was right.

My friend Walter quickly wrote a comment to my post: "Add a small red bow to one side and it will be stunning."

Okay, done.

And believing that nothing exceeds like excess, I added four little red bows.

Despite what the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, sometimes less is not more.

Too subtle

My first attempt this year at decorating for Christmas was too understated by far.

Maybe I should have filled that cut-glass bowl with red and green ornaments.

A friend of mine saw what I had done and said, "That's way too designer New York." Whatever he meant by that -- and I think I get it -- he's right: Not enough Christmas oomph.

So I'll move the bowl of blue ornaments to the dining room table this weekend and bring out the small Christmas tree that my parents used to have when we children had grown up and left home. It says "Christmas" much more emphatically. Plus there's the nostalgia factor.

So It's out with the new, and in with the old.

The tiny tree I'll be bringing out tomorrow is artificial, which doesn't earn me any points for sophistication.

But the nostalgia factor is important.

Especially at Christmas.

Ghost kitty

So who's the ghost kitty here?

Is it Cassie, reflected in the glass while she sits inside "her" house contemplating the significance of this neighborhood floozy-cat sprawled on the doormat?

Or is it the faded-gray calico cat on the doormat?

(I have never before seen a calico with what is known in cat-fancier circles as a diluted gray or diluted blue coat. I had to look it up.)

The outdoor calico -- I call her that to distinguish her from Cassie, who is my indoor calico -- appeared in the neighborhood a couple of months ago. At first I thought she was a stray, but I'm beginning to think that's not the case. I rarely see her at night or on the weekends, so I suspect she has a house to go to when her people are at home.

She's friendly enough, although standoffish. If I speak quietly to her when I find her on my front porch, she'll slowly approach me and allow me to pet her. But not for long.

I think she's the real ghost kitty, because she seems to be able to disappear at will.

She's really quite a beautiful cat, with the requisite copper and white fur mixed in with the gray in her coat. If her gray fur were black and she didn't have a full white bib and a couple of white paws, she'd be a classic tortoise-shell.

She seems to spend her days making the rounds of the other front porches in the neighborhood. Although I realize there's no exclusivity involved, I'm delighted that she considers my porch to be cat-friendly.

Cassie? Well she's not so accepting. She frequently hisses her disapproval. The charming visitor, however, simply ignores Cassie.

Up a tree

The first thing I saw when I arrived for Thanksgiving dinner was my grandnephew Carlos, up in a tree in the front yard.

Off and on, all evening, he was outside climbing that tree. Nothing, not even pitch-black darkness, could keep him out of that tree for long.

Carlos is a 7-year-old who's missing four fingers on his left hand. But that doesn't stop him. Carlos is a determined little boy. (You should see him swing a baseball bat.)

Okay, he fell a couple of times. That didn't matter. He just climbed back up again.

Between dinner and dessert, Carlos asked to be excused so he could go climb the tree. In the dark. By himself.

Determination is a powerful attribute in life. And that's another thing I'm grateful for: Carlos's determination will stand him in good stead.

Thanksgiving 2011

There were four generations gathered around the Thanksgiving table Thursday evening, the youngest of whom was Lucy, my nephew Mike's almost-two-year-old granddaughter. As Lucy and her sister, Rowan, and their mom and dad prepared to say their goodbyes, Lucy -- who is my great-great-niece -- struggled, successfully I might add, to put on her shoes.

For the first time this year, I was the oldest at the table, which gave me pause for thought: The never-ending cycle continues.

Four generations. Imagine that!

My nephew's wife, Becky, prepared a sumptuous and traditional holiday repast (she's a great cook) with the assistance of my niece Terry.

Becky, bless her heart, sent me home with a bag and a box full of delicious leftovers -- turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, yeast rolls, gravy and homemade pie. All I have to do tonight for dinner is open a can of cranberry sauce. (I would have finished off the leftovers last night, but Mike and Becky and I went to a Chinese hot-pot restaurant for a break from turkey and leftovers.)

But most important of all, I left Thursday night with memories of another delightful Thanksgiving dinner with the family. And for that, I am most thankful.

Soup time

It's that time of year -- when I start to think about soups.

To be more precise, I think about soups and stews.

Is there anything more warming to the body and the soul when the weather turns colder than a bowl of hot soup or a tasty stew? Yeah, I know it's not a particularly original thought. But think about it: clichés are clichés because they're ... well ... true.

My mother was masterful at making soups and stews. She could take a turkey carcass or a ham bone and combine them with seasonal vegetables and rice or noodles and concoct something that satisfied the spirit and left me asking for a second helping. I probably sounded like a nearly starved Oliver: "Please, Mom, may I have some more?"

I had a friend in college whom I used to invite home for dinner frequently. My mom could always make room for one more around the dining-room table. But it seemed like every time Alan came for dinner, a big tureen of beef stew was on the table.

It happened so often my mom started to be embarrassed. "Donnie, does he think that all we ever eat is beef stew?"

It got to the point where she would tell me in the morning when she planned beef stew for dinner. "Don't invite Alan tonight, please. He must be sick of my beef stew."

Alan, I should say at this point, really, really loved my mom's beef stew. As did I.

Then she started to see the humor in it, and if she planned to make beef stew, she'd tell me to be sure to invite Alan for dinner. Alan saw the humor in it, too, and always accepted the invitation.

My mom's hamburger-vegetable chowder was my favorite. As far as I know, the recipe didn't come from any cookbook; she made it up. As a kid, I even asked her to make it on special occasions like my birthday. And when I got back home after my Air Force service, I asked her to write down the recipe for me.

I made my mom's hamburger-vegetable chowder this week for my friend Mike, who was coming for dinner, and served it over rice.

It's easy, simple, and oh, so delicious.

Here's how you do it. Crumble a pound of hamburger in a frying pan with a little garlic. When the hamburger turns brown, dump in a can of undiluted Campbell's cream of tomato soup. Add a handful of shredded carrots and a little chopped celery if you have it. Drain a small can of shoepeg corn and add it to the mix, along with a teaspoon of sugar, a couple of tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and some salt and pepper.

Stir it all together well.

Simmer it covered for about 15 or 20 minutes. Serve it over rice or noodles or mashed potatoes. If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle some grated cheddar on it.

I can now add my friend Mike to the list of those who have raved over the years about my mom's hamburger-vegetable chowder. He had two big helpings, and then all but licked the plate clean.

Cat fight at the Confederate Chapel

I have no cat in this fight.

I don't own and I have never flown a Confederate flag. Nobody on either side of my family ever expressed to me any mourning for the South's loss of the Civil War. The Confederate flag, to me, is merely a historical symbol, freighted with neither negative nor positive meaning. I am sorry for Richmond's and the South's suffering and loss during and right after the war, just as I am saddened by the North's suffering and loss during and right after the war. I am grateful the North won the war, simply because I can't imagine not being an American.

In short, although I am a native of Richmond, the Capital of the Confederacy 150 years ago, I have no axe to grind in this fight.

But I do miss the flags.

The fight I'm talking about is between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the "flaggers," as they call themselves, who were angered by the museum's removal of the Confederate flags from the front of the Confederate Memorial Chapel on the museum's grounds.

You can read the museum's position on its blog by clicking here.

You can read blog posts by a flagger by clicking here.

So why am I posting about the flag-removal cat fight?

A little more background is in order.

I worked at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for 33 years before I retired recently. The museum was built in 1936 on the grounds of what had been a home for needy Confederate veterans. Still standing on the property was the Home for Needy Confederate Women, which didn't close down until 1989. A few years later, the women's home was remodeled into staff space for the museum, and my office was moved there.

Every time I walked from my office to the main museum building, I passed by the charming Confederate Memorial Chapel, which has stood alongside Grove Avenue since 1887. From its front porch columns, the chapel had flown two Confederate flags since 1993.

The splash of color -- red, white and blue -- against the background of the meticulously kept, white clapboard chapel was dazzling, eye-catching and pleasantly attractive.

You can see what the chapel with its flags looked like by clicking here, and you can see what it looks like now, without the flags, by clicking here.

Now the museum has taken the flags down, and the flaggers are picketing the museum along the Boulevard. I saw them for the first time this weekend and stopped to take a picture.

As I said before, I have no cat in this fight.

But the aesthetics have changed. What I miss most now is the lively splash of color the flags provided.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

11-11-11

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
--Will Rogers

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
--Albert Einstein

I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.
--Tom Hanks

When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.
--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

War is not nice.
--Barbara Bush

We make war that we may live in peace.
--Aristotle

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
--Flavius Vegetius Renatus

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
--John F. Kennedy

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"
--George Santayana

Listening

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.

--Albert Guinon (French playwright, 1863-1923)

Listening -- really listening -- is not an easy skill to master.

Take it from me: It took me years to master listening. And I still forget myself occasionally.

In journalism school, every one of my professors talked about the skills necessary for conducting a good interview. Every one of them said virtually the same thing: "Listen to the answers. Let your questions flow from the answers."

It isn't easy. In real life, we mostly talk at each other rather than to each other. While the other person is talking, we're too often trying to figure out what we're going to say next. Information is, perhaps, exchanged, but real communication isn't happening.

In journalism, especially in broadcasting, the tendency is to keep thinking ahead. Instead of really listening to the answer to the first question, we're preoccupied with trying to come up with the second question. "What am I going to say when he stops talking? I have to ask another question, or I'll look like an idiot."

Not so.

What I've rediscovered in the "What's Your Story?" series of half-hour interviews I've been doing for the Virginia Voice is that the questions will flow from the answers if I just relax and listen.

Usually I'll have some rough idea of where the conversation will go before we start recording. But a half-hour radio interview lasts a l-o-n-g time. My first inclination was to make a list of topics I wanted to cover. I thought about that for a while though and decided it might make for much more interesting broadcasts if I risked working without a net -- without a list of questions or topics or any written notes at all.

Let me give you just one example. One of the best programs I've done so far was with a woman who owns and runs a coffee emporium. I thought we'd spend a lot of time talking about coffee, it's history, it's place in our daily lives, and why we like it so much.

Sure, we talked about those things. But within the first three or four minutes of the interview, she mentioned that she'd spent a year of high school abroad, in The Netherlands. She'd loved it, learned so much, and keeps going back year after year. Suddenly, all my plans went out the window, and for the next 15 minutes we talked about that one year in her life and how much it had meant to her. She was passionate on the subject, and a passionate interview makes for really good radio.

The premise of "What's Your Story?" is that everybody has a story to tell. All you have to is ask.

But what I've learned, time and again, is that there's more to it.

Once you've asked, you have to listen.

What the person you're talking to says might surprise you, and the interview -- or conversation -- might head off in an unexpected direction.

And you'll often be pleasantly surprised. I promise.

Persevere

Never give up.

I interviewed a retired businessman recently for my "What's Your Story?" radio series on the Virginia Voice, a station that broadcasts to the vision-impaired and other print-handicapped people in Richmond and the Hampton Roads area.

I usually end each interview by asking my guest what advice he or she has for people just starting out. A surprising number of them say something like "never give up."

The businessman I interviewed told me about his 42 years of building his small Richmond company. He started with just himself and a building with a dirt floor. By the time he sold it 42 years later, he had 57 employees, and he had made a lot of money.

Over the course of those four decades, he sold about 40 different products. Most of them went nowhere. But a few filled a niche in the market. Those were the ones that made his fortune for him.

His advice? Persevere. Leave behind the ideas that don't work. Focus on the ones that do. Always keep your eye out for new possibilities, new ways of solving old problems. Keep on keeping on.

Never give up.

Luck and timing, of course, are important factors. However, you can't necessarily control them. But you can control yourself and how dedicated you are to success, no matter how you choose to define success.

So, as I'm summarizing life's lessons in these recent blog posts, I offer this nugget: Try, try, and try again. If you want something bad enough, be persistent. Be tenacious.

Take it from the late Steve Jobs, the co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc., who said, "I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

Read

In my last post, I discussed the value of learning to play a musical instrument.

This time I discuss the value of reading.

In a nutshell, I suggest reading anything and everything that interests you, from the backs of cereal boxes to the classics.

I won't go so far as to say you can skip school and get a complete education by reading (especially if you stop with the backs of cereal boxes). But you can come awfully close.

And I haven't even mentioned cultural literacy yet.

There's more to cultural literacy -- the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions, and knowledge that creates and constitutes a culture -- than reading. But reading makes up the major part of it.

Cultural literacy covers everything from being familiar with "To thine own self be true" (Shakespeare's Hamlet) to recognizing the origins of "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" (the Bhagavad Gita, as quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer on the test of the first atomic bomb). And we might as well throw in "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Hint: Rhett said it to Scarlett.)

Knowing these things marks you as well-bred in sophisticated society. Given that you probably want to be -- and to be considered -- worldly and well-educated, you have to read, read, and then read some more.

I've been prowling around the Internet checking out what others have to say about books that lead to culturally literacy. I don't claim to have come up with the definitive list. But I'll name some of the books with which I'm familiar. Pick a few that you haven't read and give them a shot.

I'm not listing them in any particular order, and you might not enjoy reading all of them. That's okay. It's a quirky list, but it's all mine.

Feel free to add your own suggestions in a comment on this post.

Here's my list:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Case of the Caretaker's Cat by Earl Stanley Gardner
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Holy Bible: King James Version, multiple authors
To Serve Them All My Days by R.L. Delderfield
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (published in America as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)
The Odyssey by Homer
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Stand by Stephen King
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Enjoy!

Life's little lessons

What is it with us old people and this desire we have to pass on life lessons to the young?

I'm in my seventieth year. I don't have to stretch the definition of "old" to qualify as a member of the class. Wisdom? I'm not claiming a bit of it. I can promise you that wisdom in no way piles up as the years accumulate. Experience? That does pile up -- the good and the bad.

I say this as preamble to the first in a series of occasional posts that are aimed at the young ones in the family. My experience has taught me that certain roads taken in my youth turned out to have a profound impact on my life.

For the most part, this will probably be an exercise in futility.

Why? Because, dear reader, it's futile to try to influence another's life. Just as trying to teach a pig to sing wastes your time and annoys the hell out of the pig.

Nevertheless ...

Music will bring you joy in unexpected ways.

I began to learn that lesson in, I believe, 2nd grade. I was introduced to the tonette.

Tonettes are cheap, plastic wind instruments. The fingering is simple, and they are easy to play. They were incorporated into American classrooms in the late 1930s as a pre-band or -orchestra instrument. I think the first song we learned to play in the late 1940s was "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." At first, we must have created a disagreeable and discordant sound.

But we learned to play the thing, some of us better than others. A year later we learned the rudiments of playing an autoharp. By 5th grade, I was taking violin lessons from the visiting music teacher at Helen Dickinson Elementary. Still later, at East End Junior High in Richmond, I took up the bass fiddle and played in the school's orchestra.

I stopped playing music in high school. There was no orchestra at Henrico's Hermitage High School. (Instead, there was a marching band. Bass fiddles just don't work well in a marching band.)

So what part did the tonette, the autoharp, the violin and the bass fiddle play in my life?

They taught me about rhythm -- from the rhythm of rock and roll music to the rhythm of Bach and Beethoven and on to the unusual rhythms of Dave Brubeck's music.

They taught me to hear and appreciate the rhythm of the falling rain, the rhythm of a horse's hoofbeats and the rhythm of slow dancing when the lights are low.

I learned to hear the rhythm of verbal expression, the cadence of writers from Shakespeare to Harper Lee, the simple, throbbing beauty of a perfect sentence.

Even today, I feel life's rhythms deep in my bones.

The rhythm of music learned early and embedded acutely in one's brain will emerge at some point, often in a way utterly unrelated to music.

I, for example, became a writer.

Exercising and socializing

Today the topics ranged from Studebakers to Vietnamese restaurants. As always, I learned something.

I enjoy my daily fitness class at the Richmond Jewish Community Center. It's preserving my mobility, strengthening my coordination, improving my balance and making me feel good.

But I enjoy the social aspect that follows just as much.

After our 30 minutes of aerobics, 15 minutes of handweights and 15 minutes of stretching, many of us gather in comfortable chairs adjacent to the café to relax and talk.

About half of us are Jewish, and half are Christian. I've learned a lot about Jewish customs and practices -- especially with the recent Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot holidays -- and I've explained a lot about Christian holidays and observances. But those are merely occasional topics of conversation.

More often we talk about restaurants (because we're usually hungry after an hour of exercise), movies (because of which I've seen a few good films I never would have otherwise noticed), good television programs (we're all devoted to "Masterpiece Theater" on Sunday nights), foreign travel (two people from the class are in Istanbul this week) and even politics (Eric Cantor might be Jewish, but he won't find many fans in our group).

It's an eclectic gathering. There's a woman who spent her career teaching Spanish at the University of Richmond and another who spent her career at Columbia University in New York, a man who ran a successful business in Richmond for four decades, a woman who immigrated from England (today the conversation briefly turned to the Wimpy Burgers chain in the U.K.), and a man who grew up in an apartment above his father's candy store in northern New Jersey in the 1930s.

As far as I know, I'm the only Richmond native in the group. I'm the go-to guy on Richmond history and why things are they way they are here. (Lord knows I hope I'm getting it right.)

The class meets at 10:30 Monday through Friday. Most of us are in our 60s and 70s, with a few who are in their 30s and 40s and another few who are in their 80s. Many of us are retired.

Of those of us who socialize after class, I am usually the youngest (I just turned 69).

Which brings me to my point.

In many other social situations, I'm the oldest.

So it's good to be able to socialize with people whose memories go back as far -- and even farther -- than mine.

Among other advantages, it means we don't have to explain what a rumble seat was.

Memories of Botticelli

Animal, vegetable or mineral?

The game of 20 Questions brings back childhood memories. But it can also be a complex game, as I am learning right now.

My friend Walter surprised me by starting a game of 20 Questions via email last week. Email makes the game slower but easier in at least one respect: you don't have to remember the answers because you have an email trail.

The category for the game with Walter was mineral. The answer was "a speed bump." I ran out of questions before I could get it right.

He started another round a few days ago. Again, the category is mineral. I've asked nine questions so far, and I'm stumped. If I am interpreting his answers correctly, the thing is bigger than a breadbox, can be found in homes, is used by men and women and is man made. But here's my quandary: the thing is neither useful nor decorative.

What could it be? I have 11 questions left to find out.

In my college days and for a few years afterwards, we played a more layered version of 20 Questions called Botticelli. It was named for the early Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. He's the artist in the self-portrait above. (His best-known work is The Birth of Venus, which I finally saw in the Uffizi museum in Florence five years ago.)

Botticelli, the game, begins when one player -- let's call him "the chooser" -- announces that he is a person whose last name (or only name) begins with a certain initial. If the person were Sandro Botticelli, for example, the initial would be B. The hard and fast rule is that the person whose identity the players seek must be at least as well-known as Sandro Botticelli. The person can be either fictional or real.

Botticelli includes "access questions" and "yes/no questions." Players must ask access questions about people with the announced initial until they stump the chooser. Using my B initial, I might ask the chooser "Did you commission the original plan for Richmond?" If the chooser cannot think of an answer (in this example, William Byrd II), I have stumped him. Thus I win the right to ask yes/no questions until I get a no. I might ask if the chooser's character is fictional, or if he is male, or whether he is an American.

Once I get a no answer, it's the next person's turn.

It's not necessary to stick with the facts known so far when asking an access question. In our B example, a player might ask "Are you the cartoon spokesperson for a fruit?" If the chooser says "Chiquita Banana" -- or even any other character who fits the question -- the next player gets to try an access question.

And so it goes until the yes/no questions add up to an identity, at which point the guesser whose turn it is would ask, "Are you Sandro Botticelli?" and the game is over.

Games of Botticelli can last a long time, an hour or more.

I have such pleasant memories of playing Botticelli while driving with friends to Charlottesville or D.C. or while gathered around a table at a bar or while killing time between college classes.

I haven't played in at least 30 years.

I wonder why. I should do something about that.

Perhaps I'll host a Botticelli party.

Or play a game via email with Walter.

(If you want to know more about how to play the game of Botticelli, click here.)

Mining memories

Here goes part two of my series on memories.

A few days ago I wrote about joy and of my belief that it's more prevalent in memories than in real life -- simply because joy is so rare in real life.

Memories of another kind assaulted me during this past week. This time, the memories I'm talking about are things of great ... moment, like the Watergate scandal, Nixon's impeachment and resignation, Civil Rights, Women's rights, and Southern prejudice.

One of my colleagues from WTVR TV News from the 1970s emailed me the other day. She's working on a book, and she wanted to tap my memories.

I was a new news director in the early 1970s and was building a staff. The station's and my goals converged when it was time to hire a new reporter. We had no on-air black news people. We were also woefully short on women.

I decided to hire a black woman. Months later, I picked her to be the co-anchor, with a white man, of the 30-minute noon newscast, which drew something like 70 percent of the people watching TV. It was a ratings powerhouse, sandwiched between, if memory serves me, a top-rated game show and the mother of all soap operas.

I was proud of hiring her. She was direct, honest, objective, appealing on camera, intelligent, a quick thinker and a good writer. She also was not above calling me out when leftover traces of Southern prejudice or disrespect showed through in any aspect of the news operation.

She also carried a heavy burden. She was a pioneer, a trailblazer, in Richmond television.

When she told me recently of some of the overt prejudice she recalls, it shocked me. Did I never know? Or was I just not invested enough to remember? In a recent email, she quoted bits of advice I had given her at the time. Forty years later, I read what she says I said, and I suppose I advised her well enough. But I don't remember saying those things.

What I remember most is her perspective on a city that I thought I knew inside and out. She taught me about culture, attitudes, politics. I remember conversations about authors, politicians, music and heroes. She broadened my world. She moved on to anchoring in several major national markets before leaving the business a couple of decades later.

She was on the air on Channel 6 for stories that only she and I remember and for stories the whole nation remembers. She could do a good feature story that made your heart melt. And she could keep the noon newscast on the air with few resources other than her own wits while awaiting network coverage of Richard Nixon's farewell address to his White House staff. (He was late.) With a little help from me running copy up and down the stairs, she kept the newscast moving professionally. I'll take her word for it: I have no memory of her marathon ad-lib or of my running up and down the stairs.

I don't doubt that any of it happened. I just don't remember those incidents.

This business, yet to come, of getting together and exploring our no-doubt distinctly different memories of a brief, key period in our lives as journalists will prove to be interesting and probably challenging. Two people. Two perspectives. Two selective memories of events from nearly 40 years ago.

We'll be meeting up next month. I'm looking forward to it.

Joy happens more often in memory than in life

The Charles Bridge in Prague was built between 1357 and the early 1400s. Its original statues of noblemen and saints on the balustrade have now been replaced by replicas. (Photo by Walter Foery, 2002)

Memory is selective -- and I am constantly amazed nowadays at what I do remember about my life. And what I don't.

Several threads came together during the past week to emphasize the point.

It began when I watched a travel show on Prague, a city I visited in 2002, about a decade after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. It's a beautiful, stimulating and energetic city, striving in those days to hurl itself headlong into freedom and capitalism.

I remember many details of the city -- the Art Nouveau architecture of the Old City (against a backdrop of square, spare, concrete Soviet workers' housing high on the hills). A funicular ride to a luxuriant park with a panoramic view of the city. Shopping in the city's biggest department store with only pointing and hand-gestures as a way of communicating. And staying in a B&B away from the city center: It was a bus ride and a climb up a steep four-block hill to Ron's Rainbow Guest House.

Staying there was my friend Walter's idea, and I agreed. A rainbow flag flew above the door. There was even a rainbow on the toilet lid. The décor was clean and spare with an abundant use of rainbow colors. But I was exhausted every time I walked up that steep hill to Ron's Rainbow Guest House and then had to climb two more flights of stairs to my room.

Yes, I remember that vividly.

And I distinctly remember two meals in Prague. One was outdoors at a restaurant overlooking the city. What I really recall is the view. It was a warm, sunny, relaxed afternoon in an almost idyllic spot. (Walter took the picture above while sitting at our table.)

The other was at an outdoor café at the end of the Charles Bridge (the far end in the image above). It was an intimate setting in an old and crowded part of the city. I have no memory of what we did before or after, or even of what I ate, but I recall sitting there with a good Pilsner while I people-watched. The sunlight was golden yellow. The casually well-dressed Czechs and tourists around me were just going about their lives, enjoying a brief break. I was content to sit, sip my beer and watch --marveling all the while that I was in ancient Prague, so far from home.

A third Prague meal was memorable, but for a far different reason. It was a drizzly night, and Walter and I set out for dinner with no destination in mind. We wandered the Old City. We read menus posted outside several places, and skipped them for various reasons -- too touristy, too elegant, too boisterous.

We stumbled upon a basement restaurant that seemed to appeal. The walls appeared to have been hand-carved out of the rock beneath the city, candles and fresh flowers sat on white tablecloths, the waiters wore ersatz tuxedoes, and -- best of all in those early days of freedom for the Czechs -- the menu was in both Czech and in fractured English.

But it wasn't the meal, which was perfectly fine as I recall, that was memorable. It was the finale. We wanted after-dinner drinks. I looked carefully at the English side of the menu and saw Drambuie listed. I ordered by pointing to it.

Perhaps I pointed to the wrong thing. Perhaps the waiter misunderstood, Perhaps the order got mixed up in the kitchen.

What I got was a chocolate sundae in a parfait glass.

There was no trace of Drambuie in it. But it was a fine chocolate sundae, elegantly served.

Walter, by the way, got the glass of port he had ordered.

Those are some of my Prague memories: Memories enable us to capture what brought us the most joy in our travels -- over and over again. The moments of delight come with traveling, experiencing the new, being surprised by choices, and realizing that customs, like adventures, are not good or bad, just different and sometimes exciting.

Perhaps I would do well to always keep in mind that simple joys can be memorable. That in itself is worth remembering.

More on memory next time.

A day to celebrate

Forty-five years ago, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. It was probably one of the most dynamic periods of my life. I matured over the next four years. I became more self-confident. I learned to manage my life better. I grew up.

But I had to lie in order to put on a blue uniform and follow in the footsteps of my father and my brothers. My desire to make myself proud, to make my parents proud, and to do right as I saw right, meant that I had to deceive.

Today, I received a note from a straight friend, an airman who served with me in Germany. We chat often via e-mail these days.

"Don't Ask -- Don't Tell expired at midnight, and the world kept turning. Isn't it refreshing that there is one less obstacle to serving one's nation? ... God bless you, Don -- and thank you for your service to the nation.

"Will you blog about this event?"

I told him I probably wouldn't. But his touching e-mail -- which is emblematic of this gentle soul I met nearly a half-century ago -- has been on my mind all evening.

I answered him by saying that my orientation made little, if any, discernable difference for me when I was an airman. It just wasn't an issue. There were many of us who were gay at Bitburg and Spangdahlem air bases -- enlisted men and officers who wound up getting to know each other primarily at a small but quirky and amiable bar called Zum Bitchen in Trier, about 30 kilometers away.

(I never knew how the bar got its name, but it has something to do with the German word for "small," and it certainly was.)

In Germany, I was first a surgery medic, then a broadcaster on American Forces Television. There wasn't much prejudice in either specialty. The USAF wasn't conducting any witch hunts that I was aware of. The Vietnam War was at its peak, and I assume that warm bodies in uniform were more important to the establishment than what those warm bodies did in their private lives.

But this is not to say that others didn't have a tough time, a really tough time, because of who they were. It's taken a long time for prejudice to fade just a little, and it's not gone yet.

But we're getting there.

And for that, I am thankful.

How long? (part 2)

How long does it take the city to clean up after a hurricane?

Eighteen days.

To be more precise, it took the city until today to pick up the vast piles of trees, limbs and brush that accumulated by the curb as my neighbors and I cleaned up our yards.

Using the city's web site, I reported the need for a bulk trash pickup on Aug. 30.

On Aug. 31, the I got an e-mail from the city saying my request had been taken care of.

"We are happy to report that your Trash/Bulk Pick-up request has been completed by the assigned agency. We at the City of Richmond truly appreciate your proactive approach to resolve this issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us in the future."

Yeah. Right.

I understand that the city has been busy in Irene's aftermath. But why lead me on?

The city administration's -- and the mayor's -- reputation has been tarnished by the slow response all over Richmond. For his part, the mayor has put one big plodding foot after another in his mouth as he attempted to handle the cleanup and his resulting public-relations problem. In recent days he's seemed to be running out of feet, so great has been the criticism. His only response has been to avoid giving a direct answer to any and all questions.

Dwight Jones has been mayor of Richmond since 2009. Before that, he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates for 14 years. He's certainly learned that the best way to dodge hard questions is by not answering them.

All politics is local.

And you can't get much more local than piles of debris in front of your house.

All things considered, it's good to have my personal heap of trash gone. I'm sure my neighbors feel the same way. I'm glad to have the extra parking space, and I'm happy not to have to maneuver around hurricane debris as I drive.

But there's one thing the mayor should keep in mind: Voters have long memories.

How long is long enough?

Hurricane Irene charged through Richmond exactly two weeks ago today.

Yet the pile of tree debris in front of my house has gone untouched by city clean-up crews for 12 days. I notified the city that it was good to go two days after the hurricane.

The same seems to be true in every neighborhood I've driven through -- from Northside to the Museum District to the near West End. It's worse in some areas. On the way home from the grocery store this afternoon I saw a giant city-owned tree that crashed down on a corner lot, crushing a board fence and an outbuilding. It had not been touched since it fell. Nearby was a pile of debris from a city-owned tree that had blocked a road during the storm. It had been cut into chunks and piled at the curb in front of a home.

This lack of cleanup makes parking especially difficult.

What gives? When will the city get around to clearing debris from our neighborhoods?

Maybe Mayor Dwight Jones has other things on his mind. He was slammed last week in published reports that said he failed to list his new oceanfront condo on Singer Island in Florida, for which he paid a quarter of a million dollars, on his 2011 Statement of Economic Interests.

In addition, at least one member of City Council is asking whether the mayor was even in the city when the hurricane hit. Councilman Marty Jewell insisted, "If he was here, he would have shown his face. He lives for the camera." (The city's top administrative officer says the mayor was in Richmond.)

The mayor did manage to be seen on TV when he joined Virginia's governor for a photo-op tour of hurricane damage in the near West End.

And he was heard from a few days later when he dispatched GRTC buses to housing projects to take residents to grocery stores. (A few days later, a published report said that, between them, two of the buses had transported one person. I wonder what the unit cost for that project was.)

He also was before TV cameras at the airport yesterday to greet President Obama as he arrived in Richmond for a speech at the University of Richmond.

Clearly, the mayor loves being on TV.

But when is he going to clean up the tree debris that's been littering the city's curbs for two weeks?

Perhaps he's waiting until he can arrange for television coverage.

Being "special"

"I am unique. There is only one of me."

In this morning's paper, the slogan is seen in a picture of a classroom poster that accompanies a story about Richmond's public schools opening tomorrow.

It is, of course, true. But it's so trite as to be meaningless.

The quote is from Margaret Mead (1901-1978), the famed cultural anthropologist. But there's more to it.

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

The full Mead quote appeared in the same newspaper that published the back-to-school image this morning.

It appeared just three days ago.

Does self-esteem know no boundaries?

Safe havens and pulled people

I've heard some egregious errors made by local TV reporters during the last few days of hurricane coverage.

But the prize for Most Obscure Statement Made During Coverage of the Irene Aftermath goes to ... Rachel DePompa.

In a story on last night's 6 p.m. WWBT TV newscast, she stood in front of a fallen tree reporting from a neighborhood where people are saying they're fed up with the lack of electric power.

"The rolling hills and tall trees of Stratford made this area a haven for Irene's destruction," she declared.

Huh?

Let's leave aside the fact that the neighborhood is Stratford Hills, not Stratford.

More important, does Rachel know what a haven is?

My Random House Dictionary of the English Language, unabridged, says a haven is a safe place. You know, like a harbor where you'd moor a boat to keep it from harm during a storm.

So what exactly is a "haven for Irene's destruction?" Is it a safe place for a hurricane to do its damage? The good residents of Stratford Hills might disagree.

I don't have a clue about what Rachel was trying to tell us.

Or was she just stringing cool-sounding words together without fully grasping the meaning of what she was saying.

I suspect that was it.

Rachel is not alone. In many ways, her goof is emblematic of local TV news.

A few months back, her colleague Gene Petriello reported live from the scene of a fire: "Nine people, all from the same family, without a place to live, and they have their 78-year-old aunt to thank."

What on earth does that mean? Come to find out, the aunt hadn't set the fire and made her family homeless. No, she had awakened them and saved their lives.

Gene covers a lot of fires, staples of the contemporary local newscast. Who can forget the time he proclaimed, "We're told here a woman actually woke herself up to the fire."

And he reported on another blaze: "Six people were pulled and rescued after being trapped in an apartment fire." If it weren't so tasteless, I might make some comparison between pulled pork and pulled people. Sorry. I guess it's too late for me to be tasteful.

Words, words, words. Does it matter how you use them? I guess it doesn't -- not if you're on TV.

So, here's a tip from a veteran of the word wars for Rachel, Gene, and all the other local TV news newbies: Words are tricky. The biggest problem for many amateurs who try to use them is that they have meanings. And I'm going to be picky, picky, picky here -- good sentences have logical structures.

So, if you're not sure what words mean or what order they should go in, it's probably a good idea to stop and think.

If you're in the news business, words are ... well ... your stock in trade.

Gratitude in the aftermath

I'm feeling a little guilty.

All my friends and relatives seem to be without electric power.

The power company says it'll be the end of the week before the system is 95 percent restored.

It seems that electricity -- or the lack of it -- is the new conversation starter in Richmond. "Have you got power? We've been living in the dark since Saturday afternoon when Hurricane Irene hit."

I've stopped saying I'm fine, that I'm making coffee every morning, using my computer, watching TV at night, reading without a candle. Under the circumstances, it seems unkind to say I have power.

It's true that I paid my dues during the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel in 2003. I was without electricity for two weeks. It was miserable.

My yard man -- whom I inherited from my late mother -- came by this morning with his grandson and his chainsaw to clean up the big branches that fell from the maple in the back yard. Lucky me, they fell all around and over the shed but didn't do any damage. It took the yard man and his helper about three hours to saw the debris into manageable chunks and leave them out by the sidewalk for the city to pick up. The pile is almost as tall as I am. Who knows when the city will come by to pick it up, but that's what they say we should do.

Bless my yard man's heart for coming so soon and doing such a good job. (He and my mother's 1942 Good Housekeeping Cookbook are my favorite legacies from her. He's a treasure, and the cookbook has all of my favorite childhood recipes in it, and even has a section about wartime rationing substitutes.)

Life, for me if not for my friends and relatives, is getting back to normal.

For that, I'm grateful.

Paperless

At first it was frustrating.

Then I began to see the humor in it.

By the time I got back home, I had a smile on my face.

For the third time in the past eight days, the morning newspaper failed to appear on my front porch. Or on my sidewalk. Or anywhere in my yard. Or on the city's sidewalk in front of my house.

Okay. I don't read the newspaper in the morning anyway. I read it in the evening. (I used to subscribe to the News Leader, the afternoon paper. When it folded, I switched my subscription to the morning paper, but I still read it in the evening. Odd, perhaps. But old habits die hard. Especially when you're as old as I am.)

I called the newspaper and reported the problem. "We'll try" to get a copy to you, I was told.

My daily routine kicked in, although several places on my agenda were closed because of the power outage caused by Hurricane Irene, and I didn't follow up on the newspaper problem until late this afternoon. I looked on the front porch again. No paper.

I decided to run out and buy a copy. The first two places I went to were sold out. Frustrated, I decided to drive downtown to the newspaper's main office to buy a copy.

I got there at a few minutes past 5 p.m. There was a box out front, so I dropped in my four quarters and pulled the lever. It wouldn't open. I tried again with a different four quarters. Same result.

I walked up to the paper's front door. It was locked. A guard came to the door and told me the lobby was closed. I told him about my problem. He allowed as to how he didn't know anything about the boxes.

I stopped at the CVS at Boulevard and Broad on the way home. They had no papers.

When I got home, I decided to read the T-D online. That's when the banner headline registered: "Powerless."

That's just how I felt.

Irene means "peaceful"

1:24 p.m. Saturday, August 27

The wind is howling. Trees are down, blocking major roads in scattered areas. The lights are flickering at my house. And power is lost in the westernmost neighborhood in the Fan District.

And the worst is yet to come.

Irene means peace in ancient Greek, but Hurricane Irene is anything but.

I just got back from a foray out into the storm. I had a haircut appointment at 11:30, and I stopped at the grocery store, the drugstore and the office supply store on my way home.

Most of the streets I traveled were littered with small branches and green leaves, with an occasional trash can blowing and bouncing along. Traffic lights were swaying in the wind. Major gusts rocked my car. The tops of trees were whipping back and forth. Rain was pounding down here on the north side of Richmond and is ponding deep in my back yard.

And the last forecast I heard said Richmond would bear the brunt of tropical-storm winds tonight between 6 p.m. and midnight.

Cassie, never the bravest of cats, is hidden deep under the guest-room bed.

I'm happy to be indoors and back at home.

When I left the house this morning, rain was falling, there were occasional minor gusts of wind, and the streets were clear.

But as I headed home, traffic lights were out all along Robinson Street from Cary Street to Monument Avenue. A major tree had fallen across Grove Avenue, blocking all westbound traffic just east of Malvern Avenue, and a large limb had narrowed Malvern between Monument and Broad Street from four lanes to three.

I doubt that Irene will be the worst storm I've weathered in Richmond. There was Hurricane Agnes that knocked out power and the city's water supply in 1972. Agnes was quickly followed by the No-Name Storm that again flooded Shockoe Bottom. I remember watching dead cows from farms to the west floating down the James River under the Huguenot Bridge. Most recently, Isabel in 2003 felled thousands of trees and knocked out power to great swaths of the city -- I had no power at home for two weeks -- and there were several other hurricanes along the way.

The first hurricane I remember was a big one, Hazel, that hit Richmond in 1954 when I was 12. I remember my mother telling me to stay away from the windows. But I watched anyway as trash cans and lawn furniture sailed horizontally past our house. Hazel was a Category 4 storm that made landfall in the Carolinas and killed almost a hundred people in the U.S. before it petered out in Canada.

Irene will probably not do that much damage to Richmond, but we won't really know until after midnight when the storm passes further north.

Meanwhile, it's time to bring out the flashlights, the candles and the kerosene lamps and hunker down.

2:20 p.m. update

Seventy thousand people in Central Virginia are without power now. Winds downtown are gusting to 45 mph. A 4-inch diameter limb has cracked on the large maple in my back yard. It's dangling down blocking the door to the shed deep in the rear of the yard. So far the power is holding, as is Internet and TV service. Heavy rain is blowing horizontally on Northside. The howling of the wind is really disconcerting.


3:25 p.m. update

Earlier, the storm came in waves as bands of moisture far from the center raced through Richmond. Now the winds and rain are sustained as the eye moves up past Virginia Beach. The clouds are speeding across the sky like a bullet train. Wind gusts are up to 55 m.p.h.

Cassie has emerged from under the bed, but she's doing a lot of pacing as the winds continue to howl. She'll lie down in one place for only a few minutes before moving elsewhere. When the winds blow hard, her eyes widen.

The wind has blown the screen out of one of my back windows. I heard a thump as it fell down the exterior basement stairwell. It's below ground level, so I think I'll avoid getting soaking wet and let it stay right where it is. It's unlikely to become a flying object.

Right now we're about 90 minutes away from the beginning of the worst of it. Sustained winds are forecast to reach up to 60 m.p.h for several hours.

It might be time for a nap. It looks like it will be a long night tonight. More later if the power holds.

5:20 p.m. update

Took a brief nap. The wind was howling too much to really sleep, though. I woke up when the power went off, but by the time I was fully awake, the power came back on. TV is now showing trees down all over Richmond, especially to the east, closer to the eye of the storm. More than 100,000 customers have lost power in the Richmond area now. Three limbs from the big maple tree in the back yard have now fallen, snapped off at the main trunk. I just checked the basement, which usually -- like so many others on Northside -- gets wet whenever it rains. It's dry as a bone. That's primarily because the summer has been so dry and the ground is soaking up the rain like a sponge. That's good news: Since the ground is not yet saturated, trees are less likely to topple. But that might change within the next 6 hours, during which the storm is forecast to do its worst in Richmond.

Cassie has now decided its just too much to take and is hunkered down under the big desk in the living room. That's where she usually hides from loud noises during fireworks at The Diamond or during thunderstorms.

My friend John down on Longboat Key in Florida asked me via e-mail this afternoon if this was my "first time at the rodeo." Not hardly. But it's my first hurricane since I started my blog a few years ago.

6:14 p.m. update

Latest stats: Two thirds of the Richmond metro area is without power -- that's more than 250,000 homes and businesses. The strongest wind gusts are about 65 m.p.h. Rain so far totals almost 4 inches since noon, with about four more hours of heavy downpours to go.

I still have power, although it went out briefly a few minutes ago and then came right back on. I suspect I'll lose power later this evening. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my flashlights, candles and kerosene lamps at the ready.

6:26 p.m. update

The howling wind sounds just like the storm in the beginning of the 1934 film version of "Great Expectations." If you've seen this black-and-white adaptation, you know exactly what I mean.

WTVR TV is starting to report power outages in the metro area in terms of how many people still have power. It's a far smaller number.

8:25 p.m. update

Surprisingly, I still have power. Most of the city doesn't. And this might be wishful thinking, but the wind seems to have died down a bit. We might be in a lull, but at least the annoying howling has stopped for the moment.

So who has company during a hurricane? I did. My friend Walter, whose house in Connecticut is in line for a direct hit from Irene. set out for Richmond this morning. He arrived at my front door about 90 minutes ago. He brought news with him: A large tree limb has fallen and blocked my street about a block east of me. I haven't been outside to check the neighborhood yet. I'll do that tomorrow morning.

The original plan was for Walter and I and a mutual friend to meet tonight, have dinner, and catch up on what's been going on with each of us. But Walter was, quite naturally, delayed by the storm, our friend had to work because of the storm and a shortage of personnel where she works, and very few restaurants are open here tonight because of the power outages. Our friend has no power at her house, so Walter is picking up some food and headed to see her. I elected to stay home since I have no desire to drive in this mess. Well get together for lunch tomorrow.

We're still having major wind gusts occasionally, and the local police are still warning people not to drive unless there's an emergency.

I might be jinxing myself by saying this,: I am amazed that I am one of the 25 percent of Richmonders who never lost power for more than a few minutes. But . . . the night is young, and there are still a few hours to go before the worst of the storm passes. I might still need the flashlights before this is all over.

8:48 p.m. update

Walter just called to tell me that he had to drive at least 7 miles toward our friend's house before he found places with power. None of them were restaurants. He finally found a convenience store that was open, so he stopped and picked up junk food to take to our friend's for dinner. They'll be dining on Snickers bars, bottled water and potato chips, along with whatever she might have in the refrigerator. She has no power tonight, and it'll probably be tomorrow morning before Dominion Power even starts to work on repairs.

10:31 p.m. update

Unlike the majority of Richmond, I still have power. More than a third of a million customers in the metro area are sitting in the dark tonight.

The worst of Hurricane Irene seems to have moved up the coast. We're still having momentary gusts that are quite capable of uprooting trees -- especially given that the ground is now so saturated -- but my stately maple in the back yard still stands (minus a few major branches) and my 70-year-old willow oak in the front yard survives undamaged.

It will be some time before Richmond recovers from Irene. One of Richmond's TV weathermen presented a complicated meteorological explanation of why the winds were so much stronger than expected in Richmond, in some cases as strong as the winds closer to the eye as it passed Virginia Beach. The reason has to do with areas of pressure difference between the eye and the eye-wall , some 100 miles away from us, and the pressure difference between the Richmond area and areas just to our west. If I understand correctly, the difference was greater here than along the coast. I don't pretend to really understand how and why this happened, but I do know that we took our lumps from about 2 p.m. until just an hour or so ago.

If the power -- and The Power -- stays with us in my neighborhood, I'll update the blog again tomorrow morning. If not, I'll take my netbook and go in search of free wifi somewhere.

Good night, and if you live further north up the East Coast, good luck.

Sunday, August 28, 9:30 a.m.

Chainsaws and cicadas.

That's the soundtrack of Richmond on the morning following a destructive hurricane that seems to have done as much damage in Richmond as it did along the East Coast of Virginia -- 100 miles away -- which took a direct hit from Irene yesterday and last night.

I'm still in the lucky 25 percent of Central Virginia residents who have power. Depending on whether you're hearing Dominion Power forecasts or word from state emergency management officials, it'll be either a few days or a few weeks before full power is restored.

Richmond's beauty was also its downfall.

The city has more than its share of stately trees. They've been a source of pride for generations. Tall, mature trees line both sides of Monument Avenue, one of the most beautiful boulevards in the country. Trees also line both sides of the broad median strip that runs the length of the avenue.

Many of them -- trees that have towered since before I was born and that have long formed a canopy of shade along the graceful thoroughfare -- were downed by Irene. The same is true throughout Central Virginia. Felled by Irene's high winds, they crushed houses and cars and now block major and minor roadways.

In my neighborhood, where many of the trees date back to the first quarter of the last century, neighbors with chainsaws are cutting through downed trees and limbs as the clean-up begins.

And almost drowning out the roar of the chainsaws is the noise of the cicadas, providing the everlasting summer soundtrack of the South.

The sun is out. The sky is blue. Birds are singing. It's warm, but not yet hot.

The city is beginning -- but no more than beginning -- to come back to life.

5.8

My niece sent me this photo taken in a grocery store in Louisa after today's earthquake. The epicenter was in the nearby small town of Mineral, about 40 miles northwest of Richmond.

I've heard from friends from as far away as Europe, California and Connecticut this afternoon.

They all wanted to know what the earthquake felt like.

Eerie. Weird. Confusing. Unsettling. Disconcerting.

But not particularly scary.

It happened at 1:51 p.m. I was sitting in the waiting room at the Nissan dealership on West Broad. It was time for my car's annual state inspection (it passed) when the second largest earthquake in Virginia's recorded history began. (The largest was in Blacksburg in 1897.)

At first I thought I was feeling vibrations from a low-flying helicopter. Then the building really started moving. There was no rumbling sound. Nobody panicked. We all stayed right where we were. We didn't speak. We didn't look at each other.

A few seconds passed, maybe 5, before I realized it really was an earthquake. By the time the building had been shaking for about 7 or 8 seconds, I knew it was stronger than any of the minor quakes I had felt before in Virginia.

I looked across the waiting room and past the showroom to the doors leading to Broad Street. Cars were moving along as usual. I looked up to see if the light fixtures were swaying. They weren't. Nothing had fallen from the walls or dropped off the shelves.

Nevertheless, I began to think it might be safer to be outside.

And then it was over.

The earth stopped moving under my chair.

I got up and went outside to look around. Everything seemed normal. When I came back in about 5 minutes later, the TV set in the waiting room had a bulletin from CNN: The sound was too low to hear, but the crawl at the bottom of the screen said an earthquake had struck 90 miles outside of Washington, D.C.

The service man came looking for me to tell me my car was ready. We chatted about the quake. He said cars up on lifts in the service bay had wobbled. All of the service techs had gone outside to wait it out.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. Clerks and customers alike all wanted to chat about the quake.

One clerk asked me if I had felt the quake. "Yeah, it was like an E-ticket ride at the State Fair," I told him.

On the drive home, I started to wonder how my cat, Cassie, was doing. When she hears thunder, she hides under the big desk for hours.

Cassie met me at the door looking none the worse for the experience.

"Mrroww?" she said.

In cat speak, that means "feed me."

A treasure hunt

Where is Long Don Silver's lost treasure?

That was the theme of a game last night for my great-niece and great-nephew, Milagros and Carlos, when they and their parents came for dinner.

When the kids walked out on the deck, there was an envelope marked "secret" with their names on it. Inside was an explanation of the game.

ARRRRGH!

Once upon a time, many years ago, Long Don Silver gave up the pirate life after many years of sailing under the skull and crossbones. He settled in Richmond, Virginia, right here in this house.

He knew that his mates would someday come looking for his treasure, so he hid it carefully where only a little boy and a little girl would find it one day!

But ... he left clues for them to follow.

Since you, Carlos, are a little boy, and you, Milagros, are a little girl, you fit the requirements!

Here's the first clue that Long Don Silver left just for you.

With his mother's help, Carlos puzzled out the words and meaning in the message and began the hunt. (At this stage of her young life, Milagros is content to follow along behind her big brother, whom she adores.)

The clues I wrote were not difficult. They led the kids all over the deck and the back yard -- to the tool shed, the watering can, the mat outside the back door, a pet's blue water-dish, and a large stone under the deck. (Note the dirty knees on both kids in the picture.)

After much thinking and exploring, laughter and puzzlement, they solved the last clue and found their treasure -- tucked under a large conch shell my father brought back from the South Pacific after World War II. With squeals of delight, they danced around on the deck holding up their bags of Long Don Silver's ancient treasure -- foil-wrapped chocolate "coins."

Their mom made them wait until after dinner -- hot dogs, barbecue, potato salad, corn on the cob and lemonade -- before they ate their treasure.

It's so much fun watching kids have a good time.