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Marc Schneider:

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In the last few years I made sure to be near Burt as much as possible. He retired and we spent many hours together. We took short excursions. I didn’t care. When you love someone, it doesn’t matter if your’re invited to the “hot” social occasions and the opera and the ballet, and you know what I’m talking about.

I enjoyed being with him because we had the most enlightening conversations. Having been born in 1929, the year of the “Great Depression,” he had seem “everything.” He knew politicians inside and out. He could make predictions on their next moves. His opinion of most of them was very low. I mean, come on, most of them have never worked in their lives. They’re takers. Look at their soft hands. No work. Ever. 

I’m afraid it’s come to the point where politicians run for office simply  because they get free money if they follow instructions. If not—-well, they get the boot.

President Obama, who I do admire, did say this week that the worst was still coming. Guess what it is? Do you know? We are a consumer economy, almost entirely on all of us, men and women purchasing stuff constantly. Maybe that’s why it’s not made very well! 

Tell me this: how can people pay off their credit cards if they are not working and cannot pay their mortgages? What’s going to happen when all those people default on their credit card payments?

But that revelation was not the intention of this piece: I wanted to tell you what happened to my Burt. He fell twice two months ago, once at the harbor, the second time in the ER. In the Emergency Room. It was surreal. That second fall cause his head to open and blood poured out just like you see on “law and Order. It was one of the rare times I wasn’t with him at the harbor. He actually drove home! He did not tell him that he already needed stitches and was his skin was ripped off. I took him immediately to the ER over the hill where, because of their triage technique, he was left to fall on the floor and break his head again.

Minutes passed before his fall registered with staff. I was already on the floor with Burt calling for help. It came but it was delayed. A lady who was waited screamed but she screamed too late—the event had already taken place. Two falls. One day. I was standing right next to him when he fell the second time. And now that bloody memory is embedded in my mind.

From the “Richard Schellen Collection”

January 15, 1862;

“Wrecked Vessels. It is fear that the recent strong and long continued gale of wind must have wrecked many vessels. Two are already known to be lost. The Peruvian schooner EFIN A KNIPPER loaded with 337,000 pounds of sugar; on her way to Peru to this port, was blown ashore at Half Moon Bay, just south of Point San Pedro, on the night of the 10th inst., and is likely to prove a total loss. Her cargo is insured. The captain of the EFIN A. KNIPPER arrived in this city yesterday [note: don’t know what city the article is referring to.] He states that a bark is ashore about 10 miles below where the EFIN A. KNIPPER was wrecked..”

Friday, January 17, 1862:

THE WRECKED SCHOONER.

“The U.S.  Revenue revenue cutter, Shubrick, Captain William C. Pease, arrived last night at 11:30, three hours from Half Moon, with the crew and lady passengers of the wrecked schooner ELFIN A. KNIPPER. The vessel was found to be a total loss. About 8,000 pounds of sugar was all that was saved from the wreck. No other vessel had gone ashore with fifteen miles of this place, and no bark had been lost ten miles to the southward,as reported.”

I could have been born in Berlin, Germany. I could have been born in Shanghai, China, but I popped out in San Francisco at the close of WWII.

It was war that brought me here. It was war that forced my parents to move from one country to another, places with great contrast, culturally. In 1938 Germany and China could not have been more different. 

Fortunately, Shanghai in 1938 retained a European glow from decades earlier. Shanghai had been cut up into the French quarter, the Chinese quarter, the Japanese quarter and so on. Of course, I loved the French quarter–I saw it in 1984; I don’t know if it still exists but could relate to the European flavor more than the Asian part where years earlier people were starving and begging on the streets.I have historic photos to prove it.

Let me clarify the sentence above. Nobody was begging on the streets in 1984—but they were in 1938. When I was there I saw prosperity; I was able to go wherever I wanted and was treated exceptionally well. At one point, I forgot my purse in a Chinese restaurant and it was immediately found and returned to me. I loved China and how I wish I had experienced Shanghai when it was known as the “Paris of the East.” 

My mom, who was usually credible, said she witnessed a person’s finger being removed with a knife to get a the gold ring he/she was wearing. 

Since I am a romantic who loves the ideas of spies and secrets and sweating hot love, Shanghai still had it all in 1984. Now I hear it’s just another McDonald village. Not exactly but you get the idea. 

If you know Germans you know they are obsessed with cleanliness. Shanghai in 1938 was not. I remember my father writing about the insects in his soup but he got used to it, like everything else, including being forced to give up their apartment to a Japanese apartment, one without a toilet or just about anything else. I have the documents sealing the deal. 

While my family could not get into the USA during WWII and one relative, an aunt, who went to Paris, a cosmopolitan liberal place she thought she would be safe, but, of course wasn’t as she was picked up and never heard of again. In the past few years the Red Cross sent me a list of people, including my aunt and  her husband, who had sought refuge in a famous Paris church, to no avail. 

Every country we have gone to war with; I’m thinking of Vietnam right now. Well, I’m guessing, but apparently anyone who cooperated with the USA c could not remain in the country where they were born or they would be killed as “enemies.” They came heee to the USA and one of the businesses they’ve gotten into is medical supplies. I know this because of my experience with Mission Hospice when my beloved Burt was dying. 

Gore Vidal often talks of Empire, of ancient Rome, comparing the two. Well,look around and you will see a lot of the people we went to war with, who probably collaborated with the USA, here, living here. And, you know what, I do not think they are happy. They had to leave their homes, just like my parents. It wasn’t their choice. 

War has the power to move people in a social engineering way. What a dumb thing to do. What makes official believe that these people forced to leave their homes are really so enamored with this country where they encounter discrimination, language difficulties and you can imagine the rest. Entire lives, entire families are destroyed.

Several people have said that to me: “You are generous…to a fault.:

There’s always that pause  after the word “generous” because they’re not sue if they should tell me. To them, perhaps, “generous..to a fault” is negative.

But is it? Being generous is good and a warm gesture many of us have forgotten about. 

I love to give a guest a plant or a flower or a sweet-smelling soap. Maybe a book with a request that they review it for my blog. That’s hard to get people to do but I am always hopeful. 

You know what: I think being “generous….to a fault” is not a negative trait but a very positive one that we as humans have forgotten. We have forgotten to give (not material things necessarily), you know what I mean. We have lost the ability to empathize, to sympathize, to give and feel good about it.

I am proud to be generous….to a fault.

——–

P.S.  I hear a man named Mike who lives in Miramar is copying my photos and selling them. I’ve always given them away (which I admit is dumb) but I was shocked to learn that he copies and sells them. Yuk.

Burt: “We have seen the best this country had to offer.”

He was talking, of course, about freedom. Personal freedoms.

Yes, we have seen the best this country has had to offer. I never felt so lucky  to know and believe that.

I may have spelled the man’s lover’s name wrong but it’s a song to be sung LOUD and it is filled with everything the singer has inside her/him.

(Don’t you hate that? The slashes? I come from the 1960s….that’s why I bring those slashes with me.)

I am waking you up, the way I woke Burt up. Wake up! Wake up!

Great song, by the way: Bernadette– Motown.

My life partner passed away last week. We were together for a quarter century, 25 years. A long time for a couple to stay together. People described us as having a romance out of the 1920s or 1930s. Movie love. I’m not sure what that means but I love romance and in the 1920s love and doing loving things for others had a different meaning. 

And a different flavor. Not vanilla. Not chocolate –although Burt loved dark chocolate in a candy bar or an ice cream cone.

Some of you may remember the adorable comic  Gracie Allen. Well sometimes folks (actually, it was just Burt who compared me to Gracie as her very calm cigar smoking great comedian husband George Burns shut  Gracie up by saying to the audience, always read for a good honest laugh: “Good Night Gracie.”

In her silliness Gracie made a lot of sense but George just didn’t want to deal with it, so “Good Night, Gracie.” Sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, I was Gracie Allen. (I hear her voice in my head right now–mine is much softer and soothing…)

Okay, I am misleading you a bit. I am not and was not Gracie Allen; that was a joke. But I retain a curiosity about life. Burt never ever called me Gracie. Well, once he did but he was being funny. We had something special.

Poor Burt. I loved to sing Broadway hits, and there are many things I cannot do well, among them sing and dance. . At all. And I love to sing and dance. My mom sang in a church choir and she could never understand why I could not sing. What is wrong with you? she’d ask..

But I loved to sing, especially as loud as I could–like the three words to the song (I think) by the same name:  “Good Morning Sunshine.” which, in the early morning, I blasted out at the top of my lungs. I thought I sounded terrific. I was happy.I felt myself on the Broaday stage and I wanted the whole world to hear me. Well, not the whole world, just the Broadway in my mind—unfortunately Burt was in the house, too.

Poor Burt. Sometimes he laughed; and the laugh he performed for me was special. I never heard him laugh like that for anybody else. It was a laugh filled with love and curiosity. A sweet and real laugh; I loved hearing it. I knew he loved me so much when he laughed that laugh.

. Why is this woman singing so darn loud; it’s 7 o’clock in the morning? he’d think. He either pressed his hands against his ears  to block out the obnoxious sounds and/or begged me to stop. He had to beg a few times before I’d actually stop mid-note. But I didn’t really want to stop; I am sure I was once a singer who lost her voice.

Burt loved Cole Porter; he introduced me to his fabulous lyrics. Real words with meaning, that lifted the spirit. Think of Cole Porters “You’re the top, you’re the Eiffel Tower…..

I am a “baby boomer,” as they call us and Burt was Model ’29. Yes, many years and generations and experiences separated us but it worked. I’m sure people looked at us and wondered……but, truly, our love was big.

Burt loved our garden, a garden that the artist Leon Kunke (and me, with a small “m”) labored over for years and years until it is now nearly perfect. In the sense that it flows, that it doesn’t interrupt the mind, that it says “I am beautiful. Enjoy me.”

I don’t mean to brag but the garden brings happiness, the ultimate thing you can want for any human in this day and age. It is a respite, a joy; I don’t have the words, I am struggling to find them.  

Burt’s tastes were simple. He could live in a telephone booth, he often told me, when they still were making telephone booths. I loved art and artists.

(And, as an aside, I wish the flower growers could flower-up the Coastside. We are a separate entity and will need each other, possibly, in the near future if things go stale.. Remember, the Coastside can exist on its own if only people would wake up and realize that we have all the resources here. If things get bad.)

So I picked out things I liked and covered the walls with art. I am not a collector so don’t get the idea that there are Rembrandts or Picasso’s around here. Just what I liked and hoped Burt would, too. He now lived in a house that was so different from a telephone booth but every year or so he noticed something new that had been there for, you know, “months or years.”

Of course, when Burt’s cancer began to take hold [he was at the stage where he said: “Hey, I can live with this.” He didn’t realize that it was going to get much, much worse.] But, as those of you who have had loved ones with cancer know, the patient goes into “the grass is greener stage.” That was when he “really” discovered the beautiful garden. That gave me great happiness because Burt was the ultimate business in that his main interest was his clients. One of his “jokes” was to say: “We’ll even wash your car.” And, I assure you, in the end, he would have washed your car to get your business.

He recognized and spoke of the beauty in the garden.He stood in his robe, when he could still walk and stand  for a good long time at the windows. What he really saw I will never know but he pointed at plants and commented on them.

I will write more soon but I want you to know who I am. I am June; I am the one who cared for Burt 24/7 for weeks and weeks that turned into months. I am the one who tended to his wounds (we also had Hospice, and they are wonderful; San Mateo County may have one of the BEST hospice groups in the country,  but I was the one on the front lines; I was the one sitting beside the hospital bed (he hated that bed—-he wanted to be on his feet, walking and talking and making comments about current events).

The hospital bed stood in our living room. He needed me and other things constantly so I was the one running to get blankets when he was cold. I was the one who tried to pick him up off the floor  when he tried to go wandering in the middle of the night. (I had to make sure he didn’t break anything first and then wait until early morning before calling for neighborly help: Peter Logan, Alan Deese, Jerry Larsen, they all came to my aid. I could not lift Burt up off the floor myself because it was “dead weight.”

I helped Burt drink liquids when he couldn’t hold containers anymore. We also had straws. All I thought of was Burt. I didn’t care if I was black and blue from knocking into this or that. In the end my body looked beat up. My mind was at once relieved and in a pain I had never felt before.

Of course. I was having a brand new experience. I had never taken a loved one to what is called “the other side.” 

I am June. And I am not afraid of much of anything anymore. I took Burt to the other side. I held his ice cold hands; I kissed him from head to toe; I told him how much I loved him. I told him he could let go. I focussed on him 100 per cent; he was the only thing on my mind.

Dying at home is very hard. Not everyone has the strength to do it. Mission Hospice helped me get through it..

Story by Ken Robertson

Hello June. I know it has been quite a while, but I ran into something quite interesting today: archeologists. As I was doing my route up in McNee Ranch, I noticed someone “camping” in the picknic spot (which explains the gate being unlocked when I came in). I figured they must have had special permision to have gotten the combo to the lock and sure enough one of the residents passed me, I mentioned the encampment and she said they were archeologists who came in the day before and would be staying another day.
 
I kicked myself as I left McNee that I did not drive up to the encampment and talk to them, but as it turns out, there would have been no one there. As you can see from my photos, the “dig” is on the north side of the Outrigger parkinglot. I asked if they were the state parks archiologists and they said yes and I was introduced to the head guy. I repeated my story about the headstone and he was shocked that in twenty years of working that site he had neither seen nor heard of it and was excited about finding out exactly what it was. I discribed the cement rebar construction and theorised that it looked WWII and he said he thought it might predate WWII (well he’s the expert). I also mentioned your side and he was also excite to find out about it and said it could be an invaluable resource for him. I left him my e-mail address and if he finds anything out he promised to send me a note (which I will most certainly forward and once I have his address, I will forward your URL to him).
 
This is the most promising lead yet as an archeologist has access to data that others wouldn’t and he has an indepth knowledge of the area. Hopefully I will be sending more news soon.