"That's all" (Further adventures of the Bauer family)

     Blam!
     It was just my sister, in the kitchen.
     Ka-pow!
     She was doin’ the dishes: washing and drying, I guess. No one works in the kitchen more noisily than my sister does. No one.
     My mom—a German immigrant, she's in her eighties, but she looks much younger—and I were trying to talk, in the dining room, about fifteen feet away. I kept stopping and looking over at my sister, as if to say, “Good Lord woman! Do you have to be so freakin’ loud?” But saying that would just put us all in a world of hurt worse than the one we already occupied. ("At least I'm doing the dishes!" she would bellow—and then march noisily out the front door, slamming it, crying. In my sister's world, I think, all gestures are big, so anxious is she that her unparalleled labors might go unnoticed. Still, I love her.)
     I said nothing, just scowled at the back of her head, and then returned to the work at hand. Well, I may have muttered, "freakin' madhouse."
     A few seconds later, sis pulled out a handkerchief and commenced blowing her nose like she does. That blow of hers sounds like a goddam fog horn. I looked at my mom. She looked back. We said nothing as the horn sounded forever outward into the thick fog of the harbor and the mysterious mountains beyond.
     My mom and I tried to return to our task. I said: “OK, I’ve written out these sentences. [Honk!] Let’s translate them into German.” [Blam! Whomp!]

* * *

"The woman one longs for"

     Earlier, during lunch, my mom had alluded to her failed efforts to find something on the internet. She was looking for information about her stepfather, Otto Hänfler, and his brother, a Berliner with money and connections. I knew all about these people. They are part of Bauer/Schultz family lore. (See French kiss: the sad story of baby Peter.)
     “I tried to use Google, but it didn’t work,” said mom.
     It didn't work?
     “I Googled in Berlin,” she added.
     My sister and I glanced at each other. It was a typical Bauer family utterance, making no sense, imposing a deep pause and real confusion. Such remarks are like grenades unwittingly tossed into a conversation, only to be followed by mortars and gas.
     What do you suppose she means by that?, we said, with that glance.
     “OK,” I said to mom. “You were Googling ‘Berlin’?”
     “No, I was Googling in Berlin.”
     “Have you been in Berlin recently?” asked Annie, sarcastically I guess. But it’s hard to say what counts as sarcasm around here.
     “No, I tried to go into Berlin on the internet.”
     Eventually, we determined that my mom had found her way, online, to Google Germany and had gotten nowhere Googling her stepfather’s brother, Herr Hänfler, who lived in Berlin up through the early 1940s. As a small child, my mom, who lived many miles to the east, had visited him on several occasions.

Foghorn Annie

     I decided to help her out, to write a brief request for information to be sent out to all the Hänflers—an unusual name, it seems—on Facebook. Right after lunch, I got out the laptop, opened up Word, and wrote:

I am writing on behalf of my mother, Edith Bauer. She seeks information about two relatives: (1) her stepfather, Otto Hänfler (c. 1892-1941), with whom my mother lived in Bärewalde, Pommern, and (2) his brother, also named Hänfler, who lived in Berlin (Falkensee) in the early ‘40s. If you are related to these people or have any information about them, please contact me.

     I showed these sentences to my mom. I said, “let’s translate this and I’ll send it to all the Hänflers in Germany.”
     “OK then,” I said. “How do you say ‘I’m writing on behalf of my mother’?” I had my hands poised and ready at the keyboard.
     My mom seemed confused—in shock, almost. It was as if she were trying to add two large numbers in her head and she couldn't quite manage it.
     Immediately, I knew what the problem was.
     In truth, I could easily do this translating on my own. I don’t know why I was asking my mom to do it. What the hell was I thinking?

* * *

Louise Brooks in Germany, 1929

     My folks are very good, warm people. But they’re pretty nutty. For instance, these days, they take every little thing and pour the “molasses of neurosis” over it. With them, nothing is simple; nothing is easy. Everything is painful and laborious and fraught.*
     Good Lord.
     Earlier, during lunch, my sister Annie had showed up late, as usual. With much neurotic fiddling and fussing, my mom jumped up and scurried to get Annie a veggie-burger. My mom had provided us a fine salad, too. But my dad had placed a plate over it, making it hard to notice. I didn’t want the salad to go to waste—I had finished eating—and so I advised my sister to take note of it. “It’s good,” I added.
     Naturally, molasses flowed.
     “I don’t make good salads,” announced mom.
     “You don’t?” asked someone.
     “If Roy says it’s good, it must be really good,” said mom. (Huh?) “Cuz I don't make good salads.”
     “Who says you don’t make good salads?” asked Annie.
     On it went. Evidently, my mom thinks she has a reputation for making lousy salads. It’s too painful to recall the loony details.
     At some point, I tried to cut off this blather. I said, “Look, the salad was good. And it was obscured by this plate.”
     (My dad had placed a plate of pizza bread atop the salad bowl to make the pizza bread easily available to me. But why? I was plainly finished with my meal, sipping coffee, engaging in conversation. Sometimes, apropos of nothing, my dad hands me a large handful of cough drops. I don’t even ask why he’s doing it. Nobody's coughing. I just take ‘em. Pocket 'em. Move on.)
     I continued: “And I didn’t want the salad to go to waste. That’s all.”
     That's all. Can't saying "try the salad" ever be just that?
     No.
     “I’m sorry,” said my dad, as he removed the plate. Of course, nobody had suggested that he should be sorry. Good grief.
     I hoped that that would be the end of it.
     Nope.
     “I got the salad at Costco,” said dad, sadly, resignedly—now at sea in the knowledge that he had ruined everything.
     Naturally, he commenced lecturing us: “It comes in a little kit with all these little bags of ingredients.” He started to name the ingredients, to discuss them. “The pine nut is edible..."
     Nobody wanted or needed to hear about pine nuts.
     I was in hell.
     “Listen,” said my sister, interrupting. “I’m eating as fast as I can! I’ll get to the salad in a minute! OK?! Gosh!”
     But nobody was hurrying her. My dad was just lecturing the world about pine nuts like he does.
     Dad sat back in his chair, confused.
     I just closed my eyes.

* * *

Berlin, c. 1943?

     My mom never did answer my question about how to say “I am writing on behalf of my mother” in German. Eventually, she said, “I can do it better by myself.”
     Uh-oh.
     “OK,” I said. I handed her the laptop. “This is, like, a five minute job, right?” I said.
     Mom looked at me. The remark about the five minutes was exactly the wrong thing to say. I had put pressure on her to do this thing in a reasonable amount of time. I didn’t want her to do what she often does: turn something little into some huge task, as though, if it were less than perfectly executed, disaster would follow.
     Just freaking do it. Does everything have to be such a big freaking deal that takes all freaking day, accompanied by endless freaking anxiety and dithering?
     Freak.
     Ten minutes later, my mom was still working on her translation. I said, “Just forget about it.”
     “No. Why?” She was concentrating. She was choking a pencil. (A pencil? I had handed her a laptop with my sentences awaiting translation in Word. Why wasn’t she writing in Word? I daren't ask.)
     Several minutes later, she was still working on the translation, squeezing that pencil very hard. I'm surprised it hadn't broken in two, with splinters savagely piercing her skin or flying across the room into someone's eye.
     “Listen,” I finally said. “I’ll return in a month or so and see how you’re getting along.”
     Uh-oh. Sarcasm. She gave me the Pomeranian stink eye.
     I beseeched her: “This is such a small task. Really it is. Please don't spend more than five minutes on it. That would be so wrong. So very wrong.”
     I walked to the front door and opened it, walked through it, closed it. I heard a loud, slow "click."
     As I walked home, I heard that fog horn somewhere in the distance.
     I walked faster.

Edith and her "father" Otto Hänfler, c. 1938 

*Well, not everything is thus beslathered. On Friday, I took my folks (and Annie) to lunch, and that went quite well. My mom loves to go out; my dad hates to go out, but he loves that mom loves it.

Re the Hänflers: see 

• French kiss: the sad story of baby Peter
• “With you, Lili Marleen”: Schultzean sagas
• Edith: remembering Franz, Bärwalde, Munster, etc.

"Angry men don't write the rules, and guns don't right the wrongs." (Red Emma)

Tonight is the opening night of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins at the nearby Costa Mesa Playhouse (corner of Hamilton and Meyer, down the street from Taco Mesa and the DMV). It's an unlikely American musical, but an important one.

Over at the OC Weekly, Red writes:

It's a show not often produced. Go figure. Nine killers doing song, dance, stand-up. Sondheim is of course saying, singing, joking and analyzing the whole country, and its unique, weird talent at producing a particularly perhaps American team of stand-ins for the socio-political national psychodrama, as it were: those bad actors of violence and dreamy estrangement from reality, sad mutant mentally ill people who fixate on authority in, well, less than healthy ways. (But, charmingly, at least they fixate.) We're talking about the guy who tried to kill FDR because his stomach hurt and missed, murdering the mayor Chicago. Sarah Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme, who both tried to kill Gerald Ford. (He was already dead, it turns out.) Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK) and Charles Guiteau (Garfield). Sam Byck, who tried to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House (he was ahead of his time) to kill Nixon. It's all hilarious, manic, gun-crazy fun, with tremendous songs.

The play runs for a month of Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and, yes, seeing it will surely make you better, smarter, wittier, happier, not to mention feeling good about supporting the arts by way of paying the modest ticket price asked from the troupers of a small, brave, creative and seat-of-the-pants operation charmingly situated in a residential neighborhood in east Costa Mesa. Musical Director Stephen Hulsey does amazing work and also plays Leon Czolgoz, who killed McKinley, and the cast features performances by folks with amazing pipes, including other Playhouse stalwarts. Director David Blair plays the dude with the troubled talking tummy. Hulsey's imprint is unmistakable and elegant and lovely. He has done a lot of great work with Theater Out and elsewhere, and contributed to a great CMP production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2012. My favorite song is the tandem love song in which Squeaky sings about her love for Charlie Manson as John Hinkley, Jr. sings to Jodie Foster. Do edgy, smart plays make us better people? Say yes by purchasing tickets HERE or over the phone. Plenty of free parking.

The little guy, son of Rebel Girl and Red Emma is part of the ensemble and plays Billy, son of Sarah Jane Moore.

They saw the preview last night and can say with confidence that it's quite a show.

If you go, look for Red and/or Rebel Girl, usually in the audience, lobby and/or parking lot as the little guy cannot drive yet. Tickets: $18.00 adults, $16.00 students and seniors.

from the Broadway production:

*

Accred result

IVC President Glenn Roquemore has emailed the college community with this announcement: "It is my distinct honor to inform you that the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, Western Association of Schools and Colleges, at its January 8-10, 2014 meeting, found that the College has met the Accreditation Standards associated with College Recommendations 1-6 and District Recommendations 1-6."

Former trustee John Williams

Orange County District Attorney Absorbs Once-Shamed Public Administrator's Office (NavelGazing)

     Remember all that holler from a few years back about John Williams screwing things up so badly as Orange County's public administrator/public guardian that the Board of Supervisors drove him out of office?
     This week, the board finalized a plan to shift the public administrator half of the job to the Orange County District Attorney's office, which is ironic because Williams' former No. 2 was the then-fiancé of DA Tony Rackauckas….

Tod Burnett, Lee Baca, et al.

     Back in December (see) we noted the curious circumstance that Saddleback College President, and prayer enthusiast, Tod Burnett is the “Education Editor” of a semi-conservative and New Agey (specifically martial artsy) magazine called Legends & Legacies.
     As I reported, the editors of L&L tell us that they follow a strategy that “can be found in the book, The Five Principles of Everything,” which is exactly as flaky as it sounds. Its author, Gordon Richiusa, happens to be one of L&L’s editors. He’s also a part-time English instructor at Saddleback College. Richiusa’s first novel was called SHIDOSHI: The Four Ways of The Corpse.

     Richiusa is heavily into New Agey martial arts malarkey, as is another of L&L’s editors, Frank Dux, Editor At Large. Dux is a pretty iffy character, a typical self-promoter guru type. (I.e., he's a lying sack of shit.)
     Today, I noticed that yet another L&L editor is the one and only Lee Baca, controversial Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California.
     You know about him. He defends shark finning. He’s been criticized for “placing friends on the payroll, taking … gifts,” and worse (see). Swell guy.
     L&Ls Managing Editor is one Dana Stamos. She maintains a right wing blog that busies itself with defending the homophobic Duck Dynasty knucklehead, attacking Obamacare, and generally praising the Lord. Great.
     I wonder how Saddlebackians feel about their leader associating with such a rag?

Wendy's bid for the 73rd AD (update)

Re Wendy Gabriella’s Crashing and Burning Republican opponent (update of Wendy Gabriella's 73rd AD opponent, Jesse Petrilla, has an arrest record [DtB; Jan 29]):

● AD73 Update: Jesse Petrilla’s 15 year Pattern of Anger and Violence (OC Politics Blog; January 31)
● AD-73 Update: The Jesse Petrilla Felony Conviction Scandal Expands (OC Politics Blog; Feb 5)

Sh*t hits fan, part II (recent developments!)

     At present, the college is abuzz over a remarkable fubar concerning the Library that erupted last week.
     As we reported on Friday (see IVC: the sh*t hits the fan):

     A week and a half ago, out of the blue, construction workers entered the Library and walled over a door to Room 107 (behind the circulation desk), evidently part of a plan to hand the room over to DSPS, which is in desperate need of a space for testing. No one connected with the Library was consulted about this action—certainly not the dean, not even the VPI. No warning was given.
     Naturally, Library faculty, among others, were consternated and outraged. They arranged for a discussion of the situation on the floor of the Academic Senate (last Thursday). Senators decided to have the Academic Senate Prez confront the college President with the facts—an apparent gross violation of both defined processes and his much-ballyhooed alleged "spirit of collaboration" and "civility" at IVC—and to demand that the parties responsible for this outrage be held accountable. 

Library: door becomes wall.
No process

     Last week, I asked a Library insider—someone with a reputation for honesty and integrity—to provide an account of this affair from the Librarians' perspective. Earlier today, he/she provided the following (only slightly edited for clarity), which ends with a surprise:

     Sometime in December 2013, Administrators (I forget who exactly) and Facilities started to examine Library Room 107 as possible testing space for DSPS. We were told that Library 107 should not be used as a “storage room.” But, in fact, Library 107 was not a storage room, for our part-time cataloger’s office was in the room as was our adjunct librarian workstation. The rest of the space was used for book processing and, quite honestly, we still had storage issues even when we had the use of 107.
     Dean Feldhus and the Librarians were told to come up with a “shared-use” space plan for Library 107. Consequently, the Library submitted a plan where roughly 3/4 of the space for 107 would be used for student testing and ¼ would be used for our processing area. There would be a wall separating the two areas.
     At the time, we were told that the use of Library 107 for DSPS testing was temporary and that we would get the room back for Spring 2014.
     That was the status quo, but then facilities people showed up and moved everything out of Room 107 and into Room 201 and other locations on campus. Owing to the suddenness of this action, the Librarians had no time to decide where to move the items originally stored in Room 107, and so ad hoc measures were taken.

Mea culpa posy

     A short while later, desks and chairs were moved into Library 107.
     Then, on Friday, January 24th, Facilities workers [suddenly showed up and] eliminated the access door from the library staff area to Room 107; they drywalled over the door. Needless to say, all of us in the library were shocked and in a state of disbelief. At that point, we realized that the “temporary” situation was in fact permanent, and nobody was considering our shared-use suggestions.
     Owing to unhappiness with the situation, Library faculty decided to submit an agenda item to the Academic Senate. During the Academic Senate meeting last week, discussion of this item was spirited (and very sympathetic to Librarians' perspective).
     After the Senate meeting, the Senate President met with the College President to discuss the situation.
     Then, on February 3, 2014 [i.e., four days later], the College President offered an apparently sincere apology [in what form?] for the situation and took responsibility for everything that happened. He assured the Library that a minor renovation project would begin soon to relieve the space issue and input from Library staff will be taken into account for this project. [END]

     It seems to me that an apology ain't worth much if nobody knows about it. This is the first I've heard about Glenn's alleged mea culpa. Was there a memo I missed?
     It's no secret that VP of SS Linda Fontanilla was very involved in this snafu. Will we (or the Librarians) be hearing from her as well? Perhaps the Librarians will each be sent a mystery apology posy and that will be that.
     I remind readers that, as explained on Friday, the Library snafu is only one in a series of events and circumstances that reflect the fraudulence—or at least emptiness—of administration's noisy embrace of collaboration, openness, and civility.