From A Bird's Eye View

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO MY BROTHER

December 16, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:4 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Bob, his wife Linda,their son, daughters, their husbands and two VERY cute grandchildren

It is an unfortunate fact that oftentimes in life we don’t let people know how we feel about them until we’re delivering their eulogy. We assume, we presume, we procrastinate. And then we end up saying something to the effect of, “Gee, I never told him how I really feel about him.”

Fortunately this will not be the case for my brother Bob. Our entire family gathered this past weekend to celebrate his 70th birthday and as all our family gatherings tend to be, it was filled with laughter, good story-telling (mostly true but not always), and some sentimental tears. One of Bob’s daughters arranged for 70 different people to write a tribute to him. As he reads them hopefully he will realize that from the time he was a small boy until today, he has been a much-admired person. We should all be so lucky to have an experience such as this. So with your indulgence, my blog today is an edited version of my tribute to Bob…a truly great brother.

Dear Bob,

I can’t believe you are 70 years old today! Boy, you are OLD. But, make no mistake, in very good shape. For your age…and considering that your hips and knees are shot. And we don’t even want to think about your liver. But today we mark this important milestone and let you know how very special you are. I’m sure you will get lots of notes and cards from family and friends to mark this significant birthday. But only one person can tell you what a great big brother you have been – and that’s me.

Our relationship started out a bit rocky. After all, I was the interloper who caused you, at age 7, to go from the baby of the family to the middle child. So you did what all big brothers do with pesky younger sisters – you figured out ways to torment me.

As adults, however, we found a lot of common ground. We both have a reverence for books and, of course, enjoy writing. But first and foremost is our shared sense of humor. We both think we’re pretty funny, which is good because sometimes other people don’t. Pop was a big influence on us, of course, but you always added a wry spin to a story or took pleasure in the outrageous. I still laugh when I think about the messages you used to leave at my office. Like the one you left when I was well into middle age: “Please tell Suz that her A.A. meeting tonight has been cancelled.” I explained to my secretary, “That’s just my brother – he has a very funny sense of humor.” I’m not sure she ever saw me in quite the same way again.

As I thought about my lifetime of memories with you, there are two stories from our childhood that kept coming back to me. I think that’s because these two stories, of you as a boy, portend the wonderful man you would become.

Jack, Suz and Bob …around 1955.

The first story is actually my first memory in life, in 1954 or 55. The three of us were in the backseat of Dad’s station wagon, on our way to Playland at the Beach in San Francisco. As Playland came into sight, you suddenly shot up out of your seat and shouted, “Look! There it is!! We’re here!” I was so surprised by your sudden movement and unbridled enthusiasm that even today the memory of it is fresh. Once there you soaked it all in – Laughing Sal, the Fun House, the carnival rides and the shooting galleries. You even gave me one of your prizes. On the way home you were completely satisfied – you had been someplace exciting and done something fun. Today, you are still that boy, enthused about travel, excited to go someplace new, and still generous in spirit.

My second memory is of an event a few years later. I had committed some infraction and was sent up to my room without dinner. I was scared to be alone, but I trudged up the stairs and heaved myself onto my bed, sobbing. A short while later you came to my room, carrying a bowl of soup. I cried on your shoulder, scared to be alone while you were all downstairs eating. Then you noticed that an ant had crawled onto my hand. You watched as it crawled around my fingers and you assured me it would stay with me and be my friend. But you were wrong. My friend in the room that day was you. All throughout your life you have been a good friend to many people, but no one has been more appreciative of your friendship than me. Today, you continue to be thoughtful and caring, especially with children, whether it is through your work at Ronald McDonald House, your CASA companion, or your own grandchildren, Dylan and Emma.

Jack, Suz and Bob – 2013 and we still love each other!

All of my life you have been a constant source of support, whether in times of joy or times of trouble, to offer perspective and humor, kindness and help. We are all so lucky – we three – to have each other not only as siblings but as friends. To want to spend time together and savor each moment. And in part that is due to you, the middle child, the glue that keeps the three parts together.

As much as I love to write, I will never be able to find the words to adequately express how very much you mean to me. Just know that I love you with all of my heart and that you have been a very positive influence in my life. I am so very lucky to have you as a big brother.

Happy 70^th Birthday, Bob!

Posted in opinion

The Mutation of Thanksgiving

December 9, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:3 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

The first Thanksgiving took place in 1621, a feast shared between the Pilgrims and the Indians. They ate duck and venison and played games together. The cause of the celebration was the Pilgrims first harvest in their new land (the Indian’s old land), but unlike those who followed, rather than kill, capture or constrain the Indians, they invited them to dinner. The invitation was probably a bit vague regarding dress, as the Pilgrims wore their formal black garments, white collars and funny hats while the Indians dressed a bit more casually; fortunately the ‘No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service’ admonition hadn’t been created yet. Thanksgiving remained pretty much the same for several hundred years except for the fact that Indians came to be regarded as second-class citizen and relegated to reservations . . . not for dinner.

Thanksgivings for our generation meant getting together with family and having turkey, which had thankfully replaced the duck and venison. In the early 1950s another American tradition was added to this day of feasting and thanking – football. Actually, football was added back in 1934 when the first game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears was played on Thanksgiving Day, but that traditional game didn’t come into our living rooms until the early 1950s when television sets became a fixture in most homes. From then on until recently, most Thanksgivings were about Family, Food and Football.

Then another ‘F’ word started pushing itself into our Thanksgiving holiday psyche . . . Finance. Today, news at Thanksgiving hardly ever includes stories about how people celebrated or what we are thankful for, but rather how this year’s ‘Black Friday’ revenue will stack up against previous year’s – consumer spending-wise. Before I give you the actual numbers for this year, you have to understand that ‘Black Friday’ statistics actually include retail sales from the Friday after Thanksgiving through the following Sunday. No, wait a minute, recently that’s been amended to include Thanksgiving Day as well, as many retailers are telling their employees not to be so thankful and spend time with family, but rather to get into work – we’re open!

This year shoppers spent an estimated $57.4 billion during the four-day ‘knock-your-neighbor-down-to-get-to-that-last-iPad’ event. Sounds like a lot of money, but it was actually down 2.9% from last year. Worse yet, God forbid, there was a 4% drop in that all important ‘spending-per-shopper’ category.

In more ‘F’ news, Cyber Monday (another commercially aggrandized day to hype sales via the Internet) sales amounted to $2.29 billion – just for the day; that’s up 108% from last year. And between 18-20% of that were purchases over a mobile device – Christmas shopping from your phone! So while we still eat turkey and watch football, the media bombards us with Black Friday and Cyber Monday predictions and encourages us to spend, spend, spend.

OK, this is turning into a rant; sorry, but these numbers tell me that we are getting further and further away from person-to-person contact. I get it that this is probably just ‘old people talk’, but sometimes with age, come wisdom. OK, I’m still waiting, but that’s another story. I just listened to the lyrics of that classic Christmas carol, ‘Silver Bells’:

Children laughing, People passing, Meeting smile after smile

and

As the shoppers rush home with their treasures

As numbers for Cyber Monday continue to grow, as I’m certain they will, it puts us on a slippery slope that ultimately leads to no longer hearing ‘children laughing’ – how could you with your phone in your ear constantly. No longer will there be ‘people passing’ – unless it’s gas as they sit on their computers shopping all day. And you’ll no longer be ‘meeting smile after smile’ – there will be no one to smile for, unless you are taking a ‘Selfie’ picture to pass along to your friends on Facebook who couldn’t care less. And as far as ‘shoppers rushing home with their treasures’ go, Amazon will take care of that, it’s got plans in the works to drop-ship your gift via drone, so they can eliminate the deliveryman altogether.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone; wouldn’t leave home without it, but I love family, food and football more; so before this new cyber world completely takes over, maybe we need to declare this year’s next family gathering a ‘Cell Free Zone’ – we won’t have many opportunities left, as I’m sure the next generation of mobile devices will be imbedded in our bodies somewhere. I think I have a suggestion as to exactly where they should put it.

But I could be wrong.

Posted in Holiday observations • opinion

POP’S CHRISTMAS ICE CREAM FIZZ

December 2, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:1 Comment

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Pop, near 80 years old, still making magic

There are many annoying things about Facebook but every once in a while it has a redeeming feature: reconnecting with old friends and long-lost family members. Such was the case with us this year. We were fortunate enough to find three cousins with whom we’d lost touch. Or maybe they’ve been avoiding us. In any event, we’ve had fun exchanging old family photos and sharing stories. Our cousin, Tracy Nutting Sanborn, reminded me that one of her favorite holiday traditions was our dad’s Christmas morning ice cream fizzes. Or as he called them, “The Good Fairy Fizzes”. In any event, in the spirit of the season, I am sharing a bit about the fizz and Pop’s famous recipe.

First, it’s important to understand that Christmas Eve at our parent’s house was always a rollicking affair. Mom put out a buffet spread mid-afternoon and people began to arrive in droves. Tons of their friends plus dad’s cousin and his family were there every year. As we kids got older our friends would escape their sedate family gatherings to party at the Sparrow house. There was always lots of laughter, joking, singing, and a virtual river of alcohol. Somewhere in there we always opened our gifts. Because we needed to get to some religious service at midnight, you ask? Au contraire. It was because the next morning our paternal grandmother, along with Tracy, her parents and her siblings would arrive for Christmas breakfast.

Now that I am older I look back on that tradition and think our parents were out of their minds. The last of the Christmas Eve guests generally didn’t leave until the wee hours of the morning. And then promptly at 10 o’clock, our relatives would arrive for breakfast. And this was no Chinet paper plate or Red Solo Cup affair. For some reason our mother was a bit intimidated by our grandmother. Even after 30 years of marriage and, I might add, producing three spectacular grandchildren. So we had to haul out the Wedgwood china and the good silver every Christmas morning.

Your authors, Christmas Eve 1971

Just imagine for a moment our mom, probably with a bit of a headache and definitely with too little sleep, up at the crack of dawn to make a three course breakfast. Our dad, always the peacemaker in the family, tried his best to help but honestly, anything even remotely near the kitchen was not his strong suit. So one year, after tasting an ice cream fizz at a friend’s house, he decided the drink was just the ticket to liven things up on Christmas morning. He said he put his own “spin” on the recipe, which I think means that he added just a pinch more gin. Whatever he did to it, the result was magic! Suddenly, after just one glass of Pop’s Ice Cream Fizz, the world (and in particular, our mother) was in a happier place. So as a public service, just in case you find yourself in need of some Christmas cheer, here is Pop’s recipe:

POP’S CHRISTMAS ICE CREAM FIZZ

Fill a blender 1/4 full with ice cubes

Add 6 jiggers of gin

Add 4 scoops of French Vanilla ice cream

Add 1 small bottle of soda water (the size you get in a 6-pack)

My brother Bob adds an egg so the white adds some froth, brother Jack doesn’t add an egg. Personally, I’d add it just because you can then claim it’s a protein drink.

Just blend it well and – voila – you have a concoction sure to put a rosy hue on everyone and every thing!

Our mom served them in a wine glass with a dash of nutmeg. As we got older we would conspire with Pop and ditch the wine glass for a chilled beer mug from the freezer. Saved having to go back for seconds…or thirds.

We hope you and yours have a very happy holiday season and if you find yourself getting just a bit Scroogy, try Pop’s Ice Cream Fizz. It’s a Christmas miracle.

Posted in Tributes

The Incredible ‘Earnie’ Earnhardt

November 25, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:10 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

‘Earnie’ Earnhardt

The window on being able to sit down with World War II veterans and hear, first hand, about their combat experiences is closing very rapidly (They are passing on at a rate of about 600 per DAY!). The window on sitting down with WWII vets who are as sharp as ever and remember everything is significantly smaller. I had that rare opportunity last week when friends Jack and Chuck and I traveled to the small, California high desert town of Llano (pronounced, Yon-oh), outside of Palmdale, where I was introduced to the incredible, unassuming Adam ‘Earnie’ Earnhardt. Earnie is 88 years old and is in amazing shape, both physically and mentally. He plays golf four days a week and has 8 Hole in Ones to his credit . . . so far! He makes award-winning jams (He just won 7 blue ribbons out of 8 entries at the recent Antelope County Fair) and gives them away – the three of us walked out of there with over a dozen jars of ‘blue ribbon jam’! He makes lots of other stuff too; he greeted us with some delicious homemade zucchini bread. When he’s not putzing around in his kitchen, he is an avid reader – he just finished reading Killing Lincoln and is now reading Killing Kennedy. He loves working on jigsaw puzzles (difficult ones), and he proudly displays his large collection of Playboy Magazines (He used to have every edition ever printed, but some were mistakenly thrown out when he moved). He laments, “The one with Marilyn Monroe in it was in the group that got thrown out. Damn, it’s worth about $5,000 today, not that I would have ever sold it!”. His younger years were spent growing up first in North Carolina and then in Pennsylvania; he is related to the famous Earnhardt car racing family. He explains his leaving the south this way: “I had to move out of North Carolina to keep from marrying someone I was related to.”

B-24

He was drafted right after high school in 1943 and was asked what service he preferred. “I told them I wanted to go into the Army Air Corp, so they stamped my papers and said, ‘You’re in the Navy’!” He lights up when you ask him about his military experiences. He fetched a couple of old scrapbooks for us to look through and talked about his time as a belly gunner in a Navy B-24 bomber. While he did on occasion fire the two 50 caliber machine guns from his bubble turret on the belly of the aircraft, mostly he was on unescorted reconnaissance missions taking photographs of enemy territory. His base pay was $21 a month. Flying out of Wake, Okinawa and Kwajalein, he flew missions over China, Korea and mostly Japan and in fact was in the air and personally witnessed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. He attributes his inability to have children on the radiation he was exposed to that day. But in salty language, befitting a sailor, he says he never sought compensation for any disability and has little time for today’s whiners or those concerned with political correctness.

WWII ‘Honor Flight’ attendees

After the war he became a carpenter, but when it was discovered that he was an expert at reading blueprints, he was recruited to help build hydroelectric dams all over the world, which he did for the remainder of his working life. He was married for over 50 years; his wife died 17 days short of their 51st wedding anniversary, and although he lives alone, he has a constant stream of friends calling or stopping by his home that overlooks the vast Antelope Valley. He says back in the days of the Space Shuttle, he used to sit on his back patio and watch them land at nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

‘Blue Ribbon’ Jam

When asked about the secret to his long, active life, he says, “My wife said that grocery bills were cheaper than doctor bills, so we always had 3 good meals a day”. Of course I used to drink a lot of scotch and I smoked for 45 years, so I guess I’m just lucky.” It was noted that while the three of us sat for about a hour and half asking questions and listening to his stories, he was always moving, getting something for us to see – he never sat down! How remarkable to be active, relevant and so engaged in life at 88. Last summer he was flown back to Washington DC as part of the ‘Honor Flight’ that recognized and thanked the surviving heroes of WWII. Aside from being a hero, he’s just an all around good guy – a Great Ambassador for the ‘Greatest Generation’. Thank you Earnie for your service to this country, for your example as a great American and for some damn good jam.

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Posted in blog updates • Holiday observations • opinion

A THANKSGIVING MASH-UP

November 18, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:1 Comment

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson Last summer, in the bright sunlight of August, our 10-year-old grandson looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Mimi, at Thanksgiving don’t forget the cranberry sauce and the mashed potatoes. Especially the mashed potatoes.” I have no idea why he thought I might forget these staples of our Thanksgiving feast, but for him to mention it months ahead of time means it’s pretty important to him So that makes it pretty important to me. The thing is, I think mashed potatoes are the hardest part of preparing Thanksgiving dinner. I’m usually in the throes of making the gravy and getting all the side dishes in the oven and then in the middle of this frenzy I have to mash the darn potatoes. I’ve been stressing about this over the past few weeks and combing the internet for mashed potato recipes that I can make ahead of time. But I worried that the potatoes would get mealy or dried out if not prepared at the last minute. It finally dawned on me that I was giving this far more thought than it deserves – if mashed potatoes are my biggest worry, I’m a pretty lucky person. So I turned my attention to my Thanksgiving “grateful statement”. Like a lot of other families, before we dive into the bottomless pit of calories that is Thanksgiving dinner, we each have to say what we are grateful for during the past year. I have one rule: you can’t say you’re grateful for your family, your friends or your health. Those are things that should be appreciated every day. So I began to think about what I might cite as being grateful for this year. Of course, Dash the Wonder Dog is the best thing that happened to us, but since I think of him as family that eliminated him from contention.

As if on cue, the next week two of my former teammates at Bank of America posted pictures and stories on Facebook of their latest volunteer trips and I knew I’d found my “grateful statement”. While the rest of us loll on sandy beaches or go skiing at beautiful resorts, Evan Boido and Mike Clement spend their “vacation” time in parts of the world that are most in need of their kindness and expertise. I don’t know about you, but I’m very grateful that there are such people in the world, so in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m going to tell you a bit about them.

Evan Boido was accepted as a member of Global Volunteers (http://www.globalvolunteers.org/organization/default.asp) several years ago. Their mission is to engage short-term volunteers on long-term projects to create, nurture and sustain the wellbeing of the world’s children so they can realize the full promise of their human potential. They send volunteers to the poorest areas of the U.S. and around the world. Evan accepted an assignment in Romania, caring mostly for orphaned infants and toddlers with physical or mental disabilities at the Barlad Children’s Hospital. As you can imagine, this could be heart-rending work but Evan dives into each mission with enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. Over the past few years she has made a huge difference in the lives of countless children. The staff of the hospital try their hardest to care for the children but they are over-whelmed. Without the efforts of Global Volunteers such as Evan, many of these children would languish in their cribs with little individual attention. This past trip Evan brought along her niece, Shannon (pictured right with one of the children) to make it truly a family affair. Evan has gotten to know and love many of the children over the years – she is overjoyed when one is adopted and crestfallen when one succumbs to their medical problems. As much as the hospital gains from the Global Volunteers, I know that Evan gains even more from the time spent with “her babies”.

Mike Clement just returned from the Congo, where he serves on the board of the Christian Medical Institute of the Kasai ( https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Medical-Institute-of-the-Kasai-IMCK). Their mission is to provide quality health care and health care education in that part of the Congo, the most impoverished nation on earth. The most frequent health issues include kettle burns, oil burns, accidents requiring amputations, child malnutrition, and fistula care. The hospital is proud of the fact that they have made strides in health for newborn children and their mothers through education and access. But the hospital is consistently short of medicine and is in arrears with its finances since most of the indigent poor cannot pay for their medical services. Mike, who is a communications consultant, goes once a year to the hospital to help develop strategies for fund-raising and to advise on how to keep their staffing levels within their budget. As you can see from the picture (left), he also spends lots of time with the children. This photo of a little boy, with his hand holding on to Mike’s shirt, says it all. Despite their differences in culture and living circumstances, a unique bond is created when a good-hearted person reaches out to help a small child . I have looked at countless pictures of Mike’s trips to the Congo and they all depict the locals with joyful and grateful faces, but also an unimaginable level of poverty and squalid living conditions. And yet Mike describes these trips as “soul healing”.

So this Thanksgiving I will worry less about my lumpy mashed potatoes and spend more time being grateful that the world has people in it like Evan and Mike and the organizations for which they volunteer. I hope that you have such people in your life as well and I wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in travel

The Sparrow Returns to Capistrano

November 11, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:

by Bob Sparrow

I lived in San Clemente for several years and made more than a few trips into neighboring San Juan Capistrano or SJC as it’s colloquially known, so this week I thought I would return to Capistrano to see the returning of the swallows. Unfortunately I was about 8 months late or 4 months early, depending on your perspective; either way I missed their annual spring landing date by a good margin. They leave Capistrano in October, so I managed to miss them completely. My unceremonious arrival in SJC was in stark juxtaposition to the celebration the swallows get when they arrive every year exactly on March 19^th– St. Joseph’s Day, the city’s biggest celebration of the year. Actually there are a few ‘scout swallows’ that arrive a few days early, probably to dust off furniture, turn on the utilities and things like that. The cliff swallows must arrive exhausted as they’ve come from Goya, Argentina, where they’ve spent the winter. The round trip the swallows make every year is an astonishing 12,000 miles! I tried to find out how long it takes them, to no avail – I guess it depends of whether their connecting flight goes through Dallas or Mexico City.

Once the birds arrive, then they just mostly crap on everything, so they lose quite a bit of their charm, however the Mission at San Juan Capistrano does not. It is the oldest building in California with construction starting in 1776, however a major earthquake leveled most of it in 1812. The grounds are beautiful and its history is fascinating, for which you can be thankful I won’t go into great detail here. But I will give you the short version: The Spanish claimed the land from the Acjachemen Indians, descendants from Asians who came over from Russia and first called dibs on California about 15,000 years ago – I’m guessing the traffic and smog wasn’t that big a problem back then. The Spanish moved them out and colonized California, in part with ‘Missions’ which held the paradoxical position of being both religious centers and military outposts. In all there were 21 missions dotting the coast of California from San Diego to Sonoma, built to be ‘a day’s walk apart’.

Ultimately Spain was too far away to control the territory; so when neighboring Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 they moved in while Spain wasn’t looking. America won the ‘pink slip’ to California after the Mexican-American War concluded in 1848 and subsequently the white folks rushed to California looking for gold – statehood followed in 1850. The mission is filled with details of these stories and many more, along with a good many artifacts. It was a great learning experience, and while I think California History is a require subject in all California elementary schools, what I mostly learned was that I was NOT smarter than a 5^th grader.

While in SJC I wanted to return to an old haunt, the ‘El Adobe’, a famous Mexican restaurant just down the street from the mission. This is the restaurant frequented numerous times and made famous by President Richard Nixon, when he was working at the ‘Western White House’ in San Clemente. There is a picture of Nixon and the chef hanging in the foyer of the restaurant where I imaged the conversation between them went like this:

Chef: “Mr. President, would you like to come back to the kitchen and create your own tamales?”

Nixon: (jowls flapping) “I’m not a cook”

I had one more stop before I left town, ‘The Vintage’, a bar and restaurant, created from real train cars, just across the street from the mission. It used to be called ‘The Depot’, as it’s where Amtrak makes its SJC stop. I went into the bar and had a beer and toasted to the time Linda, my best friend, Don and I sang on stage there in 1981, which seems like 12,000 miles ago.

It was a memorable return to Capistrano.

Posted in blog updates • opinion

NEWS FLASH!!!! YOUR DOG LOVES YOU!

November 4, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:6 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Recently some ingenious neuroscientist published an article in the New York Times with the astounding news that dogs experience love just like people do. I don’t know how much money was spent on this study but I think it’s pretty safe to say that most dog owners could have spared him the time and expense of the “investigation”. We KNOW that our dogs love us. And we didn’t have to train them to sit in one of those blasted MRI tubes to figure that out. But it got me to thinking … maybe I can get in on this dog behavior study trend and make myself a little extra cash on the side. As it happens, Dash the Wonder Dog, will turn one year old this month so I began to reflect on all of the “newsworthy” discoveries we’ve made over the past few months. Purely in the interest of science, here are my observations:

1. DOGS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR AEROBIC EXERCISE

I know – you read all the time about how good dogs are for getting people out to exercise. True, a dog forces you to get up off of your duff and take it outside. But that’s about the extent of the exercise at our house. Dash will lead me as far as the end of our driveway and then screech to a stop. Apparently there is a VERY interesting bush that needs to be examined and re-examined every day. And peed on. As we progress on the “walk” I take 20 steps forward and 15 steps back. There is not a leaf that goes uninvestigated. And he has all the airs of a snotty French waiter – a little upward tilt of the head and a big sniff – as if he is trying to assess the “bouquet” of the urine left by previous dogs. Once home, he is exhausted and I head off the to the gym.

2. DOGS ARE GREAT JUDGES OF CHARACTER

In the past year I’m sure we’ve met close to 500 people that we would otherwise have just walked past. Most everyone wants to stop and pet Dash or at least they give him a smile when they look at his face. We have met Judy Blumberg, the Olympic figure skater, and Edward Villella, the famous ballet dancer, because they wanted to talk about Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. More importantly, we have met countless warm and wonderful people who I happen to belive are geniuses because they thought our dog was cute. We have actually perfected what I call our “asshole test”. If someone walks by Dash and doesn’t at least crack a smile, they’re obviously an asshole. Harsh? Perhaps. But I’ve got a lot on my plate and I think this is as good a quick filter as any to determine whether someone is worth getting to know.

3. DOGS KNOW A PIGEON WHEN THEY SEE ONE

Dogs are very smart when it comes to figuring out which “parent” to go to achieve the desired result. In our house, I’m the one Dash looks plaintively at when it’s food or treat time. And usually I’m the one who has to draw the line when it comes to discipline. Dash has slept in a crate by my side of the bed since the day we brought him home, but a couple of weeks ago he underwent some major surgery so the vet told us to keep a vigilant eye on him. Which my husband, Mr. “I’m Not Sure We Should Get A Dog”, interpreted as Dash sleeping on the bed with us that night. And the next…and next…and next. Now when I tell Dash to go to bed he runs over to my husband’s side of the bed and won’t come near me. As to where this is headed I’ll leave it at this – Dash recently acquired his own pillow.

4. DOGS ARE CAREFREE

We humans could learn a lot from our dogs about chilling out a bit. You don’s see them worrying about whether the house is clean enough for guests or what might happen if the 49ers lose. Life to them is about sleeping, comforting and playing. Not a bad way to go through life – not caring one whit that their owner might be the teensiest bit mortified as they “do their business” in the middle of the hardware store. Certainly I’m not suggesting that we all take on that particular trait (God forbid) but as the bumper sticker says, “A little less bark and a little more wag” would probably do us all some good.

5. DOGS HELP US TO APPRECIATE EACH DAY

Alas, as every dog owner knows, dogs just don’t live long enough. Seems to me that some researcher ought to be working on that. It seems unfair that we should have such devoted companions, only to lose them far too soon. The last time I had to put a dog to sleep I cried for weeks. Years later just a picture of her would elicit tears. So I started a tradition with Dash the first night we brought him home. Just before we go to sleep (and it’s ever so much more convenient now that he is right next to me) I take time for one last snuggle and to review our day. I talk about the things we did and the people we met. I tell him what a sweet boy he is and thank him for another wonderful day together. Because I know that the days go by much too quickly. At the end of his life, I will know that I told him just how special he is every single day of his life .

But today we are a long way from that day….today we will play fetch until my arm gives out and I’ll probably put some funny hat on him and stick a candle in his kibble. And I’ll try to figure out how I can make headlines in the New York Times stating the blatantly obvious…DOGS ARE GREAT!

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Posted in travel

Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 3 More Rhine Ramblings

October 31, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:

by Bob Sparrow

Rene Van Loon

The crew of the Jarl was outstanding – great customer service, attention to detail and always went the extra mile to accommodate our needs. The food was excellent – varied, plentiful and often times themed according to the country we were passing through. Our most frequent contact with the crew (with the exception of the bar tenders of course) was with Program Director, Rene Van Loon, a delightfully entertaining gentleman from The Netherlands who, each evening, gave us the next day’s itinerary along with a few amusing stories. I had a chance to sit down with him during the cruise to talk about his river cruising experiences (I had lied and told him I was a fairly well-read travel blog writer. It really wasn’t a lie; I am fairly well read and I do write a blog). He talked about his love of travel and people as well as his time with Viking River Cruises. He says, “Our CEO’s focus on customer service pervades the whole company. Our goal is to create an UFE for each passenger”. UFE? UnForgettable Experience.

When asked about amusing or unusual experiences he gave two:

1) Prior to his cruising days he was giving a tour of Rome, when he asked the group at the end of the tour if they had any questions. A tourist in the back of the bus asked: “Why did the Roman build so many ruin?”

2) During a cruise he got a call from an elderly lady who said she was trapped in her room. He told her that if her door was locked that she could unlock it from the inside. She hung up, but called back a few minutes later saying she was still unable to get out of her room. So he decided to walk her through the process and asked her to describe what she was looking at. She said, “I see two doors, I tried one, but that was the bathroom and I can’t try the other one because it has a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on it.”

The people we were cruising with were very fun (See Part 2) and the crew was incredibly accommodating, but if I’m being honest, the people at our ports of call, to put it as nicely as I can, seemed a bit tired of tourists. Maybe the summer had brought them too many ‘ugly Americans’, perhaps the fact that Germany had just finished it’s ‘Oktoberfest’ attributed to a ‘hang-over’ affect. Perhaps they’re still a bit miffed over losing a couple of world wars, I don’t know, we just didn’t see too many smiling, laughing, glad-to-see-you Germans. Whatever the opposite of ‘warm and fuzzy’ is may be a good description. And the French have never really had much time for us, to wit: We were in the town of Strasbourg, France and I was trying to find change for 10 Euro so I could tip our tour guide. After being refused in two stores I went to the tourist office to asked for change. I was told something in French, by the lady behind the counter, and while I didn’t understand her, I could tell from the body language I probably wasn’t getting any change. I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand”, to which she replied something else in French. A British lady standing next to me in line interpreted and said, “She’s not giving you any change unless you buy something.” I said, “Why couldn’t she tell me that in English?” The Brit leaned toward me and whispered just loud enough for the French lady to hear, “I don’t know, but if it weren’t for British and American troops, she’d wouldn’t understand French either, she’d be speaking German.”

Viking offers plenty of ‘included’ (no additional cost) tours to castles, cathedrals, the Black Forest, etc., as well as additional tours you can pay for – which we did for 1) a pub crawl in Cologne (What a surprise!), and 2) a tour of World War II battle grounds. The latter was my personal favorite. Our guide, a gentleman from New Zealand, took us to the top of a hill and described the movement of American, French and German troops in the valley below. He was so passionate and created such descriptive word-pictures as he described the battles for the Colmar Pocket, that you could almost hear the tanks rolling and the machine guns firing.

Audie Murphy

It was in one of the battles for the Colmar Pocket that Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII, won his Medal of Honor. There is also a memorial museum in town where there are an incredible number of WWII artifacts.

A short cruise from Breisach, Germany to Basal, Switzerland concludes our romp up the Rhine. In summary, I had a lot of fun, gained a lot of knowledge, gained some new friends and gained a few pounds, and it was all well worth it.

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Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 2 Rollin’ on the River

October 28, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:7 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

Let’s get the itinerary out of the way first, because rather than focus on the places, which you can look up on the Internet if you’re so inclined, I’ll focus on the people – the crew of the ship, the people cruising with us and the people we met at our ports of call. After leaving Amsterdam . . .

First port: Kinderdijk – Lots of windmills

Next port: Cologne – Gothic Cathedral

Next port: Koblenz – Marksburg Castle

Next port: Rudesheim – Quaint German town

Next port: Heidelberg – Famous castle and university

Next port: Speyer – Another quaint German town

Next port: Strasbourg – Quaint French town

Next port: Breisach – Quaint German town in the Black Forest

Last port: Basal – probably a quaint Swiss town, we only saw the airport

Our ship was the Viking River Cruise Ship, Jarl. Jarl was a mythical Norse god who was the grandson of Odin and a symbol of strength and intelligence – characteristics with which I am unfamiliar. We had a full ship at 186 passengers and 52 crew members. River cruising provides a much smoother ride than ocean cruising, provided the water level isn’t so high you can’t get under the bridges or so low you can’t move at all, or you don’t run into all the other traffic on the river, and you are able to negotiate the tight walls of the many locks along the way. So on the surface, while river cruising may seem rather benign compared to ocean cruising, it is actually filled with a lot more variables. However the Captain did reassure us that if the boat sank and was sitting on the bottom of the river we could all stand on the top deck and be higher than the water level. So we had that going for us.

I must admit that when I first went aboard the Jarl and saw my shipmates, I had the same reaction as when I arrived at my 50^th high school class reunion – “What are all these old people doing here?” I wondered if I had mistakenly stumbled onto a ‘Prunes for the Prostate’ cruise?” However, like the high school reunion, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was ‘one of them’.

As we introduced ourselves to our new shipmates, I found that the first three men I met were two engineers, and a research scientist and the first three women I met were two authors and a Stanford graduate. I then met a group of 18 Filipinos – all doctors from Chicago. I was wondering if we’d mistakenly been booked on a Mensa Cruise – talk about miscasting!

Me, Linda, Liz, Cathy, Gary, Kathy, Mark, Bill

We then met Gary and Cathy and realized that this was no Mensa cruise. I promised them that I’d mention them in my blog so there you are! Just kidding, they were delightful people that we hung with for the entire trip and laughed our way up the Rhine. They are from Tennessee by way of Michigan and Buffalo and said if we ever wanted an NFL team to have a losing record that they would just need to move there. We also met and hung with a father and daughter, Bill and Liz, traveling together – both cigar smokers. He looked hauntingly like my late best friend, Don Klapperich and she looked like . . . well, she just looked drop-dead gorgeous. And we also hung with three ladies from San Antonio, the Stanford grad, Krista, also a cigar smoker, and her friends, Carla and Dez. We met a lot of other very nice people, all from the US or Canada (Viking separates their cruises by language so they don’t’ have to translate everything into 5 different languages throughout the cruise), but these three groups helped us close down the piano bar every night.

We became good friends with Lazlo, our delightful Hungarian piano player, who encouraged people to get up and dance as well as come up and sing. We were told that one of the doctors from Chicago was a contestant on the Filipino version of American Idol, I guess that would be Filipino Idol, and he was very good. One of the female Filipino doctors, specializing in internal medicine, wanted to do a traditional German dance, the hula, and asked if anyone knew how to sing ‘The Hawaiian Wedding Song’. Having had enough rum to cause the ship to stop in the first port and on-load another couple of cases, I lied and said, “As a matter of fact I do.” In retrospect I knew of the song and vaguely remember Elvis singing it back in the 60s. Undaunted, I got up to sing as the ‘Dancing Doctor’ performed a quite authentic version of the hula. In my enthusiasm I even included a verse in the Hawaiian language – or at least my interpretation of the Hawaiian language, which included a few swear words and several unmentionable (in English) body parts. Little did I know that there was a native Hawaiian in the audience, so when I was finished and walked past him he looked at me and slowly shook his head in disgust and said, “Really?”

No, I’m just standing in front of a fountain!

It wasn’t the first time I’d publicly embarrassed myself and it wouldn’t be the last.

Thursday’s post: Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 3 More Rhine Ramblings

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Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 1 Three Daze in Amsterdam

October 21, 2013By Sparrow/WatsonComments:2 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

It’s raining as we (“we” is wife Linda and me along with long-time friends and traveling companions, Mark & Kathy Johnson) arrive and complete the stringent requirements for passage into the wild and crazy city of Amsterdam, which consists of a stamp on the passport and a pat down to insure you have enough Euros to enjoy all that this ‘Venice of the North’ has to offer. Actually there aren’t enough Euros to enjoy ALL that this city has to offer, but we enjoyed the pat down. The rain doesn’t dampen our spirits, which have been buoyed by a sampling of that famous Amsterdam spirit – Heineken beer. OK, perhaps more than a sampling, but we were just trying to be good guests and help erase that ‘ugly American’ image.

Lines around the block we avoided

Our train from the airport arrived at busy Central Station, which sits at the north end of town and right next to the busy ‘Red Light District’, but since we’d just come from the ‘Red Eye District’ – our 7½-hour overnight flight from Chicago – we thought we should be a little more rested before we tackle ‘the meat’ of the city, so to speak.

First stop is the Ann Frank House. As instructed, we got there early to avoid the lines to get in that extend around the block. Reading ‘The Diary of Ann Frank’ before going will enhance your experience, but the tour through their living quarters does an excellent job of telling this amazing story. I can’t imagine doing this in the heat of summer, as the rooms are small and the stairways are narrow, so being herded through the house shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of tourists in need of a shower could alter the experience significantly.

Don’t look for this in the Van Gogh Museum

It’s a short walk along a canal from the Ann Frank House to the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh was many things – hard to understand as an artist, hard to categorize as a post-impressionist painter, hard to understand his relationship with Gauguin and hard of hearing – what with that cutting off of the ear incident and all. The museum is great, but don’t go there expecting to see one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Starry Night, as it is owned by the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. You couldn’t even buy a replica of that painting, as all rights are owned by MOMA. I almost got thrown out of the place for even mentioning the painting.

It was another short walk from there to the Heineken Brewery – where the highlight of the tour is at the end – not only is it over, but that’s where you get to drink a few Heineken beers, which we could have done at home. The low-light of the tour was a Disney-like ‘ride’ where you are an imaginary grain of barley or a hop or some yeast or something and they put you through the beer brewing process. We might have been better off and certainly many Euros ahead if we’d just gone to a café next door and ordered a Heineken.

Sorry, no photos were allowed

The ‘Red Light District’ made up for it. All this time I thought Las Vegas was the ‘Disneyland for adults’. Goodbye Vegas, hello Amsterdam. Prostitution is not only legal, but also quite uniquely advertised. We walked down the street and there in store window after store window are attractive young ladies dressed rather scantily just standing there ‘selling there wears’. I did feel a journalistic obligation to stop and interview a few of these working girls, but Linda failed to see the literary value in that pursuit. Between shop windows there might be a drug store – no, not the kind of drug store we’re used to, but a place to buy a sampling of various cannabis leaves, without a doctor’s prescription. The reality is that you really don’t have to buy it, just walk down the street and inhale deeply.

A couple of not-so-famous Dutch painters

I know we did some other things over that three day period, like canal rides, other museum visits, visits to great restaurants and bars, but it’s all a little foggy right now, perhaps I was inhaling too deeply as I wandered through Amsterdam.

Next post: Viking River Cruise – Part 2 Rollin’ on the River