So, for three days I've been grading my ass off. I'm really tired. So I decide to check my email and a friend has sent me the following link. It's a link to a blog, but it's not the blog that's extraordinary. There's a link on it to a YouTube video of a man called Paul Potts...a singer. I'm not gonna say much more than that, because you have to promise me you'll listen to at least one song all the way thru. He was a contestant on "Britains Got Talent", a British version of "American Idol". If the link is broke, go to YouTube and do a search on his name. The link was working tonight. Do yourself a favor. Listen to something extraordinary. Listen to his initial performance...

 

 

As one man said: "INCREIBLE, UN VENEDOR DE CELULARES SORPRENDIÓ A TODOS CON UNA FORMA DE CANTAR INCREIBLE"

 

 

 

I drove up to the Meeting of Ministry and Oversight for Pacific Yearly Meeting. I always enjoy meeting with this group. There is a profound spiritual depth to the group that is always centering and important to my prayer life. It's not often one gets a chance to sit with such folks. It was strange to drive up and not stay with Jaemon and Tana. I drove home via 101 and had pangs of memory when I drove by their place. Elaine thankfully invited me to stay at her place, which is just a few blocks from the Meetinghouse and very convenient. But I missed staying with Jaemon and Tana and seeing little Jennalise!

 

It does mean, though, that lots of things that need to get done this week just didn't get done. Since it's midterms week at school and the last day to drop is Thursday, I'm working my tail off to make tests and get them graded by Thursday night. This weekend is another big meeting as I sit on the AFSC Corporation board and their annual meeting is this weekend, all weekend, with a Board Meeting to attend on Sunday. Hopefully everything will be graded and posted on the web by Thursday night.

 

A very hectic week!

The fires here in Southern California were a lesson in disaster planning. Cell phone circuits were overloaded for voice services, but since text messaging is done by packet transmission, cell phone text messages got thru without a problem even in heavily impacted areas. One of my friends in San Diego who needed to evacuate sent me a text message via a new Web phenomenon, something called Twitter (http://twitter.com). The service became widely used down here for folks not only keeping track of each other, but also tracking the progress of the fires. Many radio, television and newspapers posted text message updates as they got new information, and relatives could check on each other. All that was needed was either a web connection or a cell phone capable of text messaging. Some of the cell phone companies were allowing text messages even if the service had not been paid for, and XM radio was sending out the LA and San Diego emergency channels to anyone who had an XM radio even if they hadn't paid for the service.

 

Check out Twitter, though. It's the biggest recent thing on the net! For the record, I'm JoeFranko on it!

The winds are supposed to die down today, but yesterday was a little like living in hell. Fires everywhere driven by 40 to 60 mph winds. Clocked one gust at 72 mph at my home. I am going to work today, but keeping an ear to the news and a neighbor who has a key and who will watch and rescue Monster if something flares up here. Dave and Marilyn have been evacuated, as was Scott, and they're all staying at Rebecca's. At least I'm still at home!

This year was the centennial of my Quaker Meeting. Orange Grove is officially 100 years old in December. When I was clerk of my Meeting a Friend rose in Meeting to say, "We ought to do something to celebrate!" So we did what Quakers always do and formed a committee, on which I sat. Now my schedule is pretty full and the committee has often met without me, so I'm not going to take a lot of credit for what happened, but I did agree to cook sausage and peppers and onions for everyone and to help coordinate the food. Of course, like any Friends' process, we had our DISCUSSIONS and CONCERNS. It's inevitable in a religion that continues to emphasize continuing revelation and that of God in EVERYONE, that everyone needs to have their say about what ought to be done. Many, many discussions ensued. The biggest one to affect me was the veggie/nonveggie split in our Meeting. It was resolved when I agreed to make both vegetarian and pork sausage, cooked on separate grills, with the peppers and onions on their own grill. No mixing! The irony of it all was that since agreeing to cook the pork sausage I have become a vegetarian again, but, hey, I'm from NYC and their can't be a feast without Italian sausage! I actually have spent months trying to find a good vegetarian faux sausage and amazingly the buture who made me the pork sausage also came up with a sun dried tomato and basil tvp veggie sausage that was really good tasting and had a texture that was so much better than those damn soy sausages.

 

So on Friday during the day I checked out the grill I had rented and on Friday night I was up until 2 am precooking the sausage and wrapping it in baggies to put into the coolers (I didn't want to poison anyone and so boiled the sausage to precook it). I hand chopped the peppers (with Mark's help, THANK-YOU MARK). We were lucky and the food processor chopped the onions just right or I'd have been up crying. For 8 hours on Saturday I cooked on a grill and wound up serving about 300 people, including the mayor and our Congress person's representative. The amazing thing about Quaker process is that the process, when it's happening, will drive those not used to it up a wall. It takes us forever to come to unity. But then something truly amazing happens and Spirit shines through. It was like that at our centennial. None of us on the committee envisioned it turning out as well as it did. It was truly a wonderful day of celebration and joy. Quakers from all over Californian showed up. Neighbors showed up. Dignitaries showed up. All of my equipment from running the AC100 Idlehour Aid Station was put to good use. We had games, make your own ice cream balls, a horse ride, sausage and peppers and a dozen salads, lots to drink including freshly squeezed orange juice, and an incredible display on 14 poster boards with original documents and diaries of the founders of the Meeting on the tables. One friend put together an 80 page history of our Meeting, while a group of Friends put together a quilting bee in our community room and was stitching together a quilt with pictures of our Meeting history sewn in. It was truly a great day.

 

One Friend even researched the original placement of the benches. Since we were originally formed by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (we are a Hicksite Meeting), Meetings back east were asked, when our Meeting was formed, to donate a bench. Each of those benches has the donor Meeting name on them, so that we can know, based on research, where those benches originally stood. So we recreated the Meetinghouse 100 years ago, complete with a facing bench. In the old days the elders of the Meeting would sit facing the rest of the congregation and that bench was called the facing bench. It was quite a Meeting yesterday as I and others on the planning committee sat on the facing bench and looked out over the Meeting. Many folks on the facing bench got to experience the joy I've always felt as clerk when I looked out over my Meeting! It's a very powerful things to watch the Spirit move over a Meeting, and yesterdays worship carried some of the power from the day before. Many rose to speak of how moving the celebration was, and one of the people who rose to speak was a woman who brought to Meeting 4 generations of her family, a family directly descended from one of the original founders. Many Friends who moved away came back for yesterday's worship. I felt so blessed to know that in 100 years folks will look at the pictures taken yesterday and wonder about this old man in a beard who sat at the front of the Meeting. Maybe even Jennalise's children will visit the Meetinghouse and see their great grandfather there, an important part of the Meeting way back when!

 

Needless to say I slept 12 hours to recover from all the work, only to wake up to 70 mile an hour winds. This will be a watchful 3 days. The winds are so bad I've gathered together some stuff in case of fire and the need to move quickly. I was planning on shopping today, but will stay home on fire watch. These winds are supposed to last until Tuesday, and it always makes one access what's important when these things happen. Monster is the only thing I really need to get out, though perhaps my electric banjo is another <grin>.

Went with Maggie up to Big Sur this weekend. When Jaemon was growing up we used to meet with two other families up in Big Sur to go camping. It used to be mostly the Johnson's, the Roupe's, and the Franko's, with kids from other families thrown in. So this was a reunion of sorts. Both Maggie and Dave called to invite me. The reason for the reunion was to celebrate Dave's 70 birthday, which hardly seems possible. Considering that Maggie and I have been divorced now almost 14 years, it's been at least 15 years since I've seen most of these folks.

 

It was a real treat to see Jeff, who is Jaemon's age, with his own daughter, Jessica. Scott has a long term relationship now, and Rebecca and Daryl are in the final stages of adopting a child. Steve and Nanci Johnson and I discovered we were at the same bluegrass festival this summer. Turns out they've gotten into bluegrass music. too. We've planned to meet in Parker in March at the bluegrass festival there.

 

Marilyn and Dave are, as always, the folks for whom family has always been so important. I've missed seeing them all these years and it was wonderful to spend time with them, especially with Dave. About the only sign of age is that he's a little harder of hearing. He gave us the biggest laugh of the weekend when he decided to start the fire with white gas, saying, "It'll burn slowly. No need to worry!", just before it exploded. Luckily he was unscathed and it resulted in just a big laugh.

 

Rebecca and Daryl were quick of wit as ever. They kept trying to get me to play the banjo, while Rebecca remembered the time I got pissed with a ranger and was uncharacteristically sarcastic with Ranger Jane. It was, of course, over my dog Chico at the time. This time there were 4 dogs, all of whom seemed to get along wonderfully. Monster has a new girlfriend, Daryl's dog Gypsy. They hit it off right from the start.

 

It was good to spend time with Maggie. I told her about my getting back into dating and my dating adventures and she shared the hassle of getting divorced for the third time. I think, though, she's really happy to be free (giddy might be a better word)! We have an easy friendship with each other now that is really important to me. No surprise to those who know I still have most of my ex-lovers in my life!

 

So this weekend was a joy. It was so good to see everyone again and to be back in Big Sur, though I think that at this point in my life Yosemite has replaced Big Sur as the vacation and hiking spot of choice.