Atlanta from the 31st floor

The view from my suite at the Marriott, and my soon-to-be-defunct MacBook. Not only do I have a sentimental attachment to this particular one, they don't make the black MacBooks anymore

I was checking into the Atlanta Marriott Marquis this week when the desk clerk told me that since I had asked for a king-size bed and they were all out, she was upgrading me to a suite.

Truth be told, I didn't give a damn whether I had a king-size bed or not; I just said that because I was traveling alone. One person, one bed. Makes sense, right? Oh, holy hell, this room was fabulous. I could have had a party, except I left my friends and my lover at home.

Of course God (or Spirit, Yahweh, Goddess, the Force, the Universe, etc) gives with one hand and takes away with the other, so the last day of my trip my MacBook died, taking every photo I shot of the beautiful Victorian-garden Oakland cemetery. I'm going to try to get them back and do a whole other column on that, but not today.

My office in the suite. A wet bar is opposite the desk.

I was in Atlanta for the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication, so luckily my computer didn't die until the last day, because I needed it. The hotel, which is akin to LA's Bonaventure in size and scope, was crawling with decidedly unfashionable people reading books in the corners when they weren't chatting with colleagues or drinking over-priced beer in the lounge.

I love my fellow composition teachers, but really, we are a dowdy lot. If you thought corduroy jackets with patches on the sleeves were something you only saw the "The Paper Chase," think again. Mid-calf flowered skirts and sensible separates are apparently de rigueur for the professorial set. Oh, and eyeglasses, lots of eyeglasses, of course. All that reading we do weakens our eyes.

A public art project brought in statuary from Zimbabwe
that line a hallway at Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

The airlines probably did a land-office business in overweight baggage charges on our return flights. The publishers were handing out review copies of textbooks, the National Council of Teachers of English were selling books, and I took reams of notes. (I could have just said the NCTE, but that also stands for National Center for Transgender Equity, so one must be careful.)


I was lucky, I stopped acquiring books at just the right time; my case was 36 pounds on the scale in L.A., and exactly 50 (the limit) on the way back. Only 14 pounds is pretty good. To steal an expression from Alcoholics Anonymous, when it comes to books, "One is too many, and a 100 is not enough." Once you start, it is difficult to stop.

Atlanta was lovely, and the people were all so nice. (Except the taxi drivers, I only had one who was a native speaker. The rest were surly foreigners.) Beginning at the airport, Atlanta was charming all over. There is an art exhibit in the Transportation Mall, "Zimbabwe: A Tradition in Stone." It was my reward for not getting on the subway tram to baggage claim. I had to walk forever, but at least it was interesting. By the way, if an airport has gone to the trouble of building a subway, take it. That means it is a loooong way to baggage claim.

The terrace seats restaurant at Turner Field. I can guarantee I'll never sit here again.

Turner Field.

The first night I was there, one of publishing companies sponsored a buffet dinner and open bar at Turner Field, the home of the Atlanta Braves. They have an arcade-like area near the entrance with electronic batting cages and a pitching game that tells you the MPH of your fastball. Needless to say, this non-athletic teacher didn't try it; I don't like to play games I suck at. I killed at the in-flight trivia game, but baseball? Not so much.

Statue of Hank Aaron near the entrance to Turner Field.

My head started playing Tim McGraw's "I Like it, I Love It," where the song's persona is complaining that he's so wrapped in his new girlfriend, "I ain't seen the Braves play a game all year..."

I can see why people like ballparks. This one had a museum, and was very pretty, but once you're there, you gotta watch baseball. That's the downside, as far as I am concerned.

The next afternoon, I caught a cab to Oakland Cemetery and spent about four hours wandering around the huge mausoleums and crypts of Atlanta's famous and rich. That's my idea of being outdoors.

I went, of course, to see the grave of Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone With the Wind," but ended up seeing so much more. The cemetery, which had all its plots sold by 1884, is segregated, with whites, blacks, Confederate soldiers, and Jews each in their own area.

Phil Hulst, the volunteer on duty in the visitor's center, is a retired educator with a lovely Southern accent. He told me that this year is the 75th anniversary of the publishing of "Gone With the Wind," and next month will be full of celebrations like this. That figures, I'm always a day late and a dollar short. Hulst directed me to the African American section, where a grant has helped them do a free cellphone tour.

You dial a number, then punch in the number on the sign in front of the grave. The narration tells stories, like that of Dr. Roderick D. Badger, a prominent black dentist who was the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave. His work became so popular with both races, that white dentists banded together and tried to get a law passed to prevent him from practicing.

On the way back to the hotel, my one English speaking cabbie, a young black man, expressed surprise that I could spend all afternoon in a graveyard, I explained the African American Voices project and how inspiring it was. He was intrigued and said he had lived in Atlanta his own life and didn't know anything like that existed.

I only wish I could have seen more of Atlanta: it seems like a very cool place. I especially would like to have that suite back....

Long-distance wedding plans

My two lovely daughters, who are two years and two weeks apart and squabble like toddlers. On the left is the elder and Charlotte's mom, and on the right is the soon-to-be-married younger who lives in New York state.

My two daughters, like many siblings, are obsessed with fairness. Each of them at some point in their lives has been convinced that I love the other better and do more things for her.

They swear that they have grown out of this, and it is no longer an issue, but I doesn't seem that way to me. And sometimes, those complaints are valid. I am not doing nearly as much for my younger daughter's wedding as I did for my older one. Monetarily, it's a wash; I gave the younger one the equivalent amount of money.

But in terms of sweat equity, the situation is nowhere near the same. My younger daughter is getting married Memorial Day weekend, and I haven't written about it yet, probably because I don't have all those things that I had to take care of for Charlotte's mom driving me insane.

It is no one's fault — the fact that my kid is 3,000 miles away in Long Island, and getting married in Rhode Island means that I can't be as involved. In some ways, this is a good thing — ask the other daughter — because I am a terrible procrastinator and perfectionist. (They actually go hand-in-hand, I procrastinate when I'm afraid I can't do something perfectly.)

My kid trying on wedding dresses at Rossana's
Bridal Cottage. This dress was not a favorite,
but it is a better photo of her than the others.

Buying a wedding dress is way less nerve-wracking than waiting for your mother to finish sewing yours (I was still sewing the morning of the wedding, and never did get the bustling loops in). And having a mom who frets over every single tiny detail and doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut about things she doesn't like can be tiresome.

I am famous for annoying my kids by saying things like: "Are you really wearing that?" or  "Don't you think you should do such-and-such? or "Why don't you try it this way?"

I guess I always assume that when I point out the error of their ways, they will do the right thing. That's what my father used to do, and it worked for him. (Most of the time, anyway.)

It works better on the older one, but the little one (if you can call 5'10" little) usually just does what she pleases, and gets annoyed that I tried guilt-tripping her.

She has been living in San Francisco for the last five or six years, and it has been difficult to have her so far away, but she managed to make it home for holidays, plus a few other times, and if we were really desperate, we could always drive up and see her.

The bride-to-be making the family proud by
winning a beer-drinking contest at the first
Lemon Leaf Oktoberfest.

The argument, when her winemaker fiance took her all the way to Long Island, was that she would still make it home the same number of times. Considering the new highs in airfares, we will see how that works out. One can't just jump on Southwest for 45 minutes, and there is the pesky jet lag to deal with.

That distance made my sewing her wedding dress well nigh impossible. Crossing a continent for fittings might be okay for the girls with deep-pocketed fathers we see on "Say Yes to the Dress," but we are po' folks.

I felt bad about the dress, and I wanted to sew her something, so I am making her pale pink silk lingerie. I have learned one thing about the garment district: it is a whole lot easier shopping there when you don't know exactly what you want.

I wanted a particular weight of silk and the perfect lace to complement it. That necessitated combing blocks of fabric stores and about eight different trim shops to find the lace I had envisioned.

I finally found the perfect stuff, and a rhinestone comb that may or may not suit her wedding up-do. I also have to make a flower-girl dress for Charlotte in the interest of cost cutting, and three yellow sashes so they will match the other girls (the groom's twin nieces are also doing flower-girl duty).

My baby and her fiance at Charlotte's first birthday party March 2010.

Considering that my daughter and I have the capacity to watch back-to-back "Say Yes to the Dress" and "My Fair Wedding" marathons, and we've been talking about her wedding since she was in middle school, it is a little sad that I can't be more involved.

But I am glad that her future mother-in-law is a nice person whom my daughter likes and gets along with. She took my daughter to get her wedding dress, helped her pick the venue, and is being helpful in a number of ways.

Ultimately, all that matters is that my daughter is happy on her wedding day. Because of the cost, she will not have as many of her friends and family there as we had hoped, but her nuclear family will all be there, along with Charlotte. Charlotte is a party all by herself, so what more can you ask?

I get a kiss from my daughter on my wedding day. Charlotte's father is on the right.

Haunted weekend

Even on cloudy days, Santa Monica is full of tourists, locals taking the sea air, and last weekend, LA Marathon runners.

It's getting harder to get away from it all these days.

When the "all' you are trying to get away from includes news of wholesale death and destruction — it seems churlish to be enjoying yourself. But really, I'm not trained in earthquake search and rescue, so what can I do except donate money?

And there's not a damned thing I can do about Libya, except pray. But still, thoughts and worry about the state of the world cast a pall over last weekend's excursion to Santa Monica to see the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising's annual scholarship dinner and fashion show, Debut 2011.

A Friday's conversation with my German friend Barbara didn't help. I guess they don't have natural disasters on a scale with ours in her native country, because she is freaked out about earthquakes after the news from Japan. Stupid me, I made the mistake of telling her about Jim Berkland, the former Santa Clara County geologist who predicted the Loma Prieta earthquake four days prior.

I take next-to-nothing seriously, and certainly nothing I see on Fox News, so I threw it out there in a phone conversation that Berkland had predicted The Big One for California in an interview, and that the most likely day was Saturday, the following day.

"What are you going to do?" she asked me.

"Go to Santa Monica," I replied. "If the have the 'big one,' maybe a tsunami will get me."

(I should get struck down for this flippancy, I know. It wasn't nice. She was really scared.)

I have lived in California most of my life. I have packed more earthquake survival kits and then stolen the stuff out of them than I care to remember. Out of toilet paper? There's some rolls in the backpack in the trunk of daddy's car.

I have kept emergency cash, emergency food and water, and packed small emergency kits requested by my children's school with toys, family photos and a loving note inside. But after preparing so many times  and nothing happens, you get jaded. Eventually, you stop doing all those things. I know we should all be prepared like the Mormons, but it becomes tiresome.

The terrace of Le Merigot where I
sipped a martini and imagined tsunami
destruction.

So I told her about this the way I would a novelty, like a three-headed chicken, but she wasn't amused. And the conversation haunted my reverie on the terrace of the Marriott across the street from the beach the next day, when I looked at the building and calculated how high a tsunami would hit. (I figure the third floor, right where the patio umbrella is.)

I tried to conjure up visions of deck chairs, patio heaters, tables and marathon runners being sucked out to sea by a wall of water. Oh, did I mention that 3/4 of our hotel was populated by out-of-towners bent on running the LA Marathon? It was a win for us, because the hotel had a special carbo-loading menu, and the mushroom raviolis were to die for...

I think those those poor marathon runners were less concerned about an  earthquake than they were the skies opening up on them the following day. (Which they did— a sopping wet runner stepped out in front of our car while we were exiting the hotel parking lot, and scores were treated for hypothermia on race day.)

We went out on the pier and mingled with people in Adidas sportswear and cameras, local families treating themselves to a day at the shore, and thin bespectacled Japanese teenagers holding collection  boxes marked "Pray for Japan." So, even there in that seemingly carefree environment we were reminded that the seaside was not a calm diversion everywhere in the world.

The Santa Monica carousel building in the background, and the play ship and sea monster in the foreground.

The FIDM show later that evening was the best in the nearly ten years I have been attending. Ten of the students in the third-year program do a 12-look collection for the fashion show, and the media production this year did video projection like at this year's Academy Awards, that totally transformed the stage for each designer.

We were whisked to a snowy Moscow for the woman who did an all-knot collection based on Eastern European colors and folktales, for example. A designer whose looks didn't fit comfortably into a certain place and time was treated to a background of Grauman's Chinese Theater and dancers playing 1940s reporters and photographers. The effect was amazing.

The show began with the costume design students imagining "Carnivale in Rio," and as you would expect, the results were stunning. All that talent and imagination put into service to a wide-open theme gave birth to six-foot headdresses, glitter, spangles, enough Spandex to send us reeling back to the 1980s, and more colors than a flock of tropical birds.

My personal favorites, not surprising, were done by a little goth girl designer who had a steampunk Nancy Drew-like investigator, and a huge-skirted black and red number with an Elizabethan-style ruff that looked like cemetery gates. The kicker was that the bodice had a skull bra. The whole thing looked very heavy, but I totally wanted to wear it for Halloween.

Sunday morning dawned with the Pacific a slate-gray, and a monotonous drizzle soaking the hardy souls down on the beach: tourists with baby strollers determined to get a dose of ocean, and recreational runners not out on the marathon course.

The hotel was so quiet, it felt like we were the only people in the world, but bad news in the form of the LA Times snuck into our bubble — when we last heard the news, the French and their allies were only the ones involved in Libya. Now we knew
that Uncle Sam was flying sorties, too.

That afternoon we saw the LA Opera's "Turn of the Screw," a natural for that gloomy day.
Jim, looking at the rain pouring down: "This is perfect 'Turn of the Screw' weather.
Me: "No, this is 'Wuthering Heights' weather."
Jim: ""Nope, it's 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' weather."

And it was — the wind was insane; the little Miata was blowing all over the road on the way home, and I had to avoid parts of trees in the road. It was rather like being a tent on a bad Girl Scout camp-out with the rain drumming the ragtop. I finally turned the radio off because I couldn't hear it over the din.

The Dorothy Chandler chandeliers from the
 level of our nose-bleed opera tickets.

The opera was satisfyingly creepy, and lunch at Pinot on the plaza was interesting. Water was pooling under the tables, and I was sitting right next to the clear-plastic wall, which kept blowing back and forth, creating a wave in the puddle right next to my feet. I felt sorry for the servers who were working in waterproof parkas.

As you may have noticed, the predicted earthquake never came, and the window that Berkland gave has come and gone. I know I should get prepared, and I'll work on that. And I resolve to be more circumspect about what I tell my German friend. My Californian blase attitude is not very helpful.

Locking Out Redemption

Editor's note: Since I couldn't get my column together on time, my husband decided to take this opportunity to get something off his chest. Enjoy!

I bleed orange.

I am a Denver Broncos fan. I loathe the Raiders. If I was that creepy kid from that Twilight Zone episode, I would wish the Kansas Chiefs into a cornfield. I wish evil, unspeakable things upon the San Diego Chargers.

I'm not sure exactly when I became a fan, but growing up in Colorado,  it was inevitable. Perhaps because the Broncos were lovable losers, comically inept like I was when I first started playing the  game. The first time I intercepted a pass in a neighborhood game, I got spun around and ran the ball back the wrong way. I joyously celebrated what I thought was a score for my team only to turn and see my teammates groaning and shaking their heads while  the opposing team laughed.

The Broncos and I were destined for  one another. Every year, my hopes would soar in September  as a new season started. Most years would end in  heartbreak, but for two glorious seasons we were the best in the league.

I bring this up  to help explain the frustration and anger I feel about the NFL's labor dispute. For those of you not following the issue, I'll sum it up this way — billionaire owners are arguing with  millionaire players over how to  slice a $9 billion revenue  pie. Instead of negotiating a new  contract, the two sides are engaged  in a battle that includes  lockouts, injunctions,  and lawsuits.  There  is a real  possibility that games will be lost. Maybe even an entire season will be lost.  

The situation is especially frustrating for me because it's delaying something my team needs desperately right now  — redemption.

Let me set the stage for you.  After the Broncos won back-to-back Super Bowls in the 1990s,  they made a decade-long slide into mediocrity. Then, just when we thought it couldn't get worse, along comes head coach Josh McDaniels to destroy the team and take away our self-respect in just two years.

The evil Josh McDaniels.

It wasn't just the losses, of which there were many. It wasn't the terrible personal moves, also many in number. No, it was the horrible atmosphere he created — one that contributed to players and coaches making headlines for all the wrong reasons. There was a suicide, an arrest  for sexual assault, and a star player arrested not once, but  twice for DUI,  and then the final humiliation — a cheating  scandal in which one of McDaniel's friends videotaped the practices of an opposing team, a violation of league rules. It's not clear if McDaniels was in on  the cheating, but he did know of the incident and did not  come forward.

Not only were we losers, but now we were cheats to boot.

McDaniels was shown the door. John Elway,  the man who gave us so many thrills and our  two championships as a player, came back, this time as an executive to run the team. John Fox, a man who turned a horrible team  into a good one once before,  was hired to  replace  McDaniels.

There  was hope.

Then came the labor dispute.

With wars in the Middle East, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, and financial despair rampant just about everywhere, my thoughts and prayers are scattered about the globe. But each day, I add one  more prayer — Let the us have the opportunity to rebuild our Denver Broncos, our pride, our image, our self-respect. Let's have a shot at being good again. Give us a chance to get the stadium rocking once again.

Column will be delayed

I'm in Santa Monica, after going to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising's annual scholarship dinner and fashion show, Debut 2011, and I'm on my way to see "Turn of the Screw" at the Music Center.

Happy birthday, Lotte!

Charlotte in one of her photo sessions with Valeri Estrada from Little Blue World Photography

In a few weeks, my darling granddaughter Charlotte will turn two. Forget about the terrible twos, she started into that developmental stage about six months ago. It occurs to me that one of the reasons I got the ax from my former employer was they thought I wrote about Charlotte too much, and I haven’t written about her for months.

Being a grandmother is not what I expected. In some ways, it is so much more: that overwhelming unconditional love that you thought you’d never feel except for your children. And at the same time, it is not all Hallmark moments, especially with a granddaughter as precocious as Charlotte.

Charlotte and her mommy at the beach in Santa Monica.

I imagined that Lotte would be a cuddle-bug like her mommy: eager to sit in a lap, bestow kisses, ask for a story, or stroke your hair. Charlotte is way too busy for all of that. She is cuddly with her mom and dad, of course, but only on her own terms. To my daughter’s heartbreak, she is sometimes banished from the play space by her tiny tyrant.

With everyone else, she is like a skittish woodland creature: curious about this adult who has invaded her space, but not very anxious to have a close encounter of the third kind. Not shy, really, because she’s happy enough to have you stare at her; she’s just wary, like a faun at a watering hole.

I approach her like I would any wild animal: I acknowledge her presence but keep my distance. I let her come to me. You can’t just pick her up, or she screams bloody murder. Now that she is talking, eventually she will want to tell you something, so she initiates contact.

Lotte checks out part of a train with
her daddy at Travel Town. She always
wants to know how it works.

She is whip-smart, and curious about everything. Her mind is like a pachinko machine—you can almost see the bright silver balls bouncing from pin to pin as she takes in a concept and makes the connections, ending with the payoff of enlightenment.

Her dad is determined that she not be prissy and too girly, so he loves that she will eat bugs with him at the natural history museum and isn't afraid of snakes.

But I think he's fighting a losing battle with the girly stuff; Lotte is Disney-princess crazy, with Ariel and Tiana being her personal favorites. 

She brings out the best and the worst in me. Like the other day: In response to her command “Don’t touch me!”, I childishly chased her into the kitchen with my index finger outstretched, and poked her in the stomach when I caught up to her. Yeah, I know, I should be above that, but suddenly I was 7-year-old again, with a bratty brother in the backseat of my parent’s station wagon.

I imagined being a traditional, but hip, grandmother. You know, one who bakes cookies, sews heirloom dresses, AND listens to alt-rock, but it turns out I'm so busy, I don't have time to bake, and I mostly babysit Charlotte for her parents' movie dates. Lotte has a very full schedule of playdates, naps, doctor visits, and outings, so it can be difficult getting facetime.

So far, the extent of my spoiling has been to let her watch "Nightmare Before Christmas" whenever she comes to my house. I do this because when she walks over to the television, blonde curls bouncing, and asks "Jack? Sally?" I am helpless to resist her charms.

 

Charlotte, two binkys in one hand, finds a spot of dirt
on the street in Beverly Hills.

She is particularly fond of the male part of the species. She is no sooner on my doorstep than she starts asking about my husband: "Pop-Pop?" to which the answer is most likely, "He's at work."

Now that we've said that so many times, she will answer her own questions, saying" "Pop-Pop is at work..." .

Constantly in motion, one of the few things that will slow her down is an offer to read a book. If you're lucky, she'll only want to hear it once, otherwise, she pipes up with, "Again?" as soon as the last page is turned.

She doesn't suck her thumb, or carry a blanket, so when she needs soothing, she wants a binkie. Actually, she wants two: one to suck, and the other to stroke her cheek with, much the way Sherlock Holmes fingers his pipe.

Although I think her goal is world domination when she's lost in thought like that, not problem solving.

It's hard for me to imagine ever taking her affection for granted, but maybe it is a good thing that she bestows kisses the way a queen does land grants — it makes you appreciate them even more. When she slides her little arm around my neck and buries her face in my shoulder, I know there is nothing I wouldn't give her, no task she could set me I wouldn't do gladly.

Lotte is such a joy that she inspires me to want to live a long life in order to see what crazy thing she will do next.

littleblueworldphoto.com

Top up, cramped — Top down, liberating

Ham the Chimp squashed into his capsule at
Holloman Air Force Base in the late 1950s.
My husband swears this is what he feels like in the MG.

Editor's note: I am under the weather, and while I was sick in bed, my husband Jim disappeared for a few hours, came home and wrote the following. 

I hate my wife’s MG.

It is evil personified. It is a cash-sucking machine. It is British engineering — which is an oxymoron equivalent to jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, fiscally-responsible Democrat, or compassionate conservative.

This hatred started when our Saturn died, forcing us — and by us, I mean me because Kim took possession of Honda Fit — to use the MG to get back and forth to work. Had it been time any other time of the year it wouldn’t have been so bad, but alas, this happened during a very cold stretch of winter. That meant the MG’s top had to stay up.

A couple of very bad things happen when the top is up. First, all the vehicle noises — of which there are many — get amplified. Second, the smallness of the cabin makes me bent over and squished. I feel like Ham the chimp, the astronaut chimpanzee NASA crammed into a rocket and shot into space.

On cold days, which all of those days seemed to have been, I had to use starter fluid to get the MG to start. As much as I washed my hands after, I could still smell the fluid as I headed to work.

Another reason for my hatred of the vehicle is that fact that it spends as much time in repair shops – or waiting to go to a repair shop — as it does running. There was one week in which it made three trips to a repair shop — once for an odd wheel noise, a second time for a broken seat, and a third time for a wonky starter.

If it were any other vehicle, I would have pushed my wife to get rid of it. It would have been on Craigslist so fast it would have made your head swim.

Ham the chimp peers out of his capsule.
www.animalplanet.com

So why is it still in our carport? Let me begin by quoting one of my daughter’s instructors who said of an obstinate llama that was refusing training: “Well, at least she’s pretty.” Yes, damn it, it is pretty. People’s heads turn when we drive it. When I drive it, I have women who wouldn’t normally give me the time of day come up to me.

When my redhead wife is in it even more heads turn. Kim insists that isn’t true, that people are just looking at the car. As a guy, I know the difference between an admiring look at a vehicle and a lecherous look at a woman. Let me break down the guy math for you: sports car + redhead = sex on wheels.

Ok, so I’m exaggerating. I don’t really hate the MG. In fact, I’ve had some great moments in it. The first that leaps to mind is driving it to my wedding with one of my groomsmen, James Koren, in the passenger seat, both of us in tuxedos. It looked like something out of a James Bond movie. Okay, with two guys, it looked like something out of a gay James Bond movie (Thunderballs, anyone?), but a Bond movie nonetheless.

On a sunny day, with the top down, the MG is a joy to drive. It’s not fast by any means, but it handles curves and turns like a cat. It’s perfect for a leisurely drive in the country or, in the case of the Antelope Valley, into the nearby hills.

My drives into the hills are what I call “perspective drives.” While others are racing from Point A to Point B like crazed tenants of an Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm, I’m enjoying the scenery.

I took one of those perspective drives on Saturday. I was feeling a bit blue, thinking of money problems, career issues, and how schools have failed to recognize my wife’s talent, forcing her to be a road warrior adjunct instructor instead of a full-time, tenure-track professional. So that was the frame of mind I was in when I looked at the MG in the carport, ignored recently by Kim, who now has a Miata, and by me, who prefers the roomy cabin of the Fit, especially on cold days.

The MG started right up – it was as if it was eager to be driven. The day was perfect for a drive – sunny, about 70 degrees, with a slight breeze. I headed up to Lake Hughes. Along the way I saw guys in boats on Lake Elizabeth, people out with their dogs, and 20 or so bikers making a mid-day stop at the Rock Inn. It was an idyllic day.

Along the way, I saw the first wildflowers of spring – even a handful of poppies. Parts of the hills were still black from the Station Fire, but here and there patches of green were pushing through the charred earth. It is cliché to say that sight was life-affirming, but just because something is cliché doesn’t mean it’s not true or worth some quiet reflection during a drive.

I think it’s rather impossible to stay blue on a sunny day when you’re driving an MG with the top down. Maybe the MG isn’t so evil after all.