JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· January 12, 2017

As the World Turns… Part Two

Yes, as I said yesterday in Part One, words do matter… and I tossed these out to show which ones dominated the media circus at the end of 2016.

World order. Disruption. Transition. Cyber-Intrusion. Destabilization Post-truth. Twitter.

I should have substituted transitions for the word passages in Part One, because the lives and accomplishments I celebrated – Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host, and Chuck Feeney, the founder of Atlantic Philanthropies – are not leaving us. They are both very much alive but transitioning to new phases in their lives.

Today’s celebrants are also transitioning, but the death of John Glenn and the end of the Obama presidency are real passages. It has always been my intention to maintain the long view and remain positive at a time when the news cycle is dominated by sensational sound bites, rising fears, and uncivil debate. I hope you agree that we need to find a way through the noise to a positive outcome.

Of the four transition/passages I picked to write about, only John Glenn’s was a true ending, and of all the celebrity obituaries in 2016, John Glenn’s was more personal and significant to me than most. As a music fan I mourned the deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Merle Haggard, Guy Clark, and Glen Frey, and though I disagreed with most of his decisions I recognized that Antonin Scalia was a major figure in the judicial pantheon. The world was diminished by the death of Elie Wiesel, who kept us from forgetting the Holocaust and Muhammed Ali for reminding us that there is such a thing as courage outside the ring as well as in. There were many more final passages last year, but John Glenn’s signaled the end of an era.

He was a pioneer, a true American hero, and a gentleman. I was first aware of Colonel Glenn in 1959, the year I earned my Naval Aviator wings and two years after he set a transcontinental speed record in “our” airplane, the F8U Crusader. It was my first fleet assignment to a Marine squadron and I was privileged to fly the hottest fighter in the fleet, the same model F8 that Major Glenn had flown on his record setting cross-country flight. By then he had become one of the seven astronauts chosen for the Mercury space program, and the only Marine of the seven. We Marines regarded him as our man in the program and took immense pride in his accomplishments.

In February of 1962, my squadron mates and I crowded around a small black and white television set in the Ready Room of VMF-312 to watch Colonel Glenn become the first American to orbit the earth. It was a proud moment for us, but a larger moment for America.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered Ted Williams, the great Boston Red Sox slugger, was John Glenn’s wingman in Korea. It’s hard to imagine Ted Williams as subordinate to anyone, but John Glenn was one of a kind and commanded the respect of everyone who knew him – even the greatest hitter in baseball history.

Colonel, then Senator, Glenn was a legend, a friend of Presidents, and eventually a US Senator from Ohio. After four terms in the Senate, the 77-year-old retired from politics in 1998 and returned to space aboard the Shuttle Discovery where he provided valuable information to NASA about the effects of space on the older body.

I admire John Glenn for his pioneering aviation and space accomplishments and his service in the Senate, but it’s his essential goodness that I admire most. He was the most American of Americans. Born and raised in a small Ohio town, he served his country in two wars and flew twice as an astronaut. He married his high school sweetheart, Annie, a woman who had a pronounced lifelong stutter and their marriage endured for 73 years. He died exactly one month ago today at the age of 95. John Glenn will be buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery on April 6, 2017. For those of us who came of age in the middle of the 20^th Century, the end of John Glenn’s life marked the end of the most remarkable era in modern American history.

Transition, as I’ve noted, is one of those words that makes banner headlines today. The papers and pundits cross their fingers as they discuss “a smooth transition of power” in America’s political life, and government employees cross theirs hoping that the transition to civilian life will also be smooth. But, the last transition and perhaps most memorable transition to highlight is the end of the Obama White House – and the tenures of the Obama and Biden families as its First Families.

This is not a political statement but a purely human one. The Obama and Biden families have modeled the high standards Americans have always said they wanted in their elected officials, and whether you agree or disagree with their politics their collective behavior sets a high bar for their political heirs worthy of every American’s admiration.

As President Mr. Obama’s legacy is still in question, but there is no question that the two families represent the best of American values – integrity, loyalty, intelligence and love. They love each other. They love their children. And, they love America.

Critics may disagree strongly with the impact of their political decisions, but no Presidential families, in my lifetime, have led such exemplary public lives. There was never been a hint of scandal in either family, and their collective personas mirror mutual admiration and affection. Both families have tried to live as normally as possible. The President made a point of having dinner with Michelle and his daughters every night before returning to work in the Oval, and Jill Biden continued her career as a community college English teacher during Joe’s years as Vice-President. All four have demonstrated the kind of rectitude, goodness, dignity and, yes, “family values” that Americans say they admire and want in their leaders.

Today, in a special ceremony, President Obama awarded Vice-President Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom (with special distinction) an honor given to only three other people – Pope John Paul II, former President Ronald Reagan, and Colin Powell.

We will miss both of these families and the examples they set. The nation will miss them too – even if they strongly disagreed with their politics. God speed, as we used to say to John Glenn, you deserve the best of everything. I know your work is not complete and I will be watching as you and your families transition to the next phase of your lives. Thank you.

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Categories : Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· January 11, 2017

· 2 Comments

As the World Turns… Part One

Words matter… and now that we’re closing the book on a tumultuous 2016 it’s worth taking a look at the ones that hijacked the news cycle at year’s end.

World order. Disruption. Transition. Cyber-Intrusion. Destabilization Post-truth. Twitter.

These highly charged words dominated the cycle and continue to dominate as we move closer to next week’s inauguration of a new President-Elect. I won’t try to parse the dark side of these year-end favorites, or summarize their importance in 140 characters or less, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that words (and actions) do matter, but they matter less in the heat of a Twitter moment than in thoughtful reflection.

This is a look back at 2016 and some personally significant passages – a year-end wrap up in two parts.

Stonehenge came to mind as a touchstone for these reflections, because it stands as distant timeless reference for new beginnings. Long before Galileo determined that our planet circled the sun, humanity looked at the winter solstice as the end of the annual cycle and the beginning of a new one, and whether it was the Druid’s Stonehenge, Egyptian pyramids, or the 3^rd millennium B.C.’s Chinese lunar calendar, people have used the turning over of the solar year as motivation for reflection, renewal and rebirth – their own as well as the earth’s.

Taking the long view, the stoney solidity and spiritual mystery of Stonehenge help me recalibrate my capacity for wonder. How did a primitive culture we know almost nothing about perform the calculations necessary to determine the exact angle and moment the earth was reversing its solar cycle? How was it possible to move those 75 enormous stone slabs nearly 150 miles from where they were quarried to the Salisbury Plain, and how did they erect them with such scientific precision that they presented the sun rising over the Heel Stone on the precise azimuth of the summer solstice and show it setting on the reverse azimuth at the winter solstice? We can only theorize about these things and the even greater mystery of its meaning, but when I revisit those mysteries I’m reminded that I’m only a tiny atomic particle in an infinitesimally small moment in the history of the universe.

Archaeologists estimate that the construction of Stonehenge took roughly 1500 years and was completed about 3500 years ago. These facts alone give me pause to adjust my horizon to something longer than the current news cycle.

When I looked at 2016 I was determined to focus on the positive. In a year of unpredictable, calamitous, disruptive events it would be easier to name the electoral event, the death of Prince and Bowie, or the unusual mother/daughter deaths of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher as the most significant passages, but our current death spiral of negative political news casts the year in a different frame for me. Rather than focus on the negative I looked back at four passages that reinforced my belief in the goodness, dignity, optimism and humanity in our midst? There are many more, but these four helped me think positively and respectfully about the future – how we might redirect our orientation from fear in the present tense to a positive, humane future.

These passages struck me as exemplary and it made sense to divide their narrative into two parts. Part One (today) celebrates the accomplishments of two people whose contributions remind us that civil political discourse and selfless generosity elevate our innate goodness. Part Two (tomorrows blog) celebrates two more passages that exemplify the best of American values.

I confess that I didn’t know anything about Diane until 5 or 6 years ago. It wasn’t until I started listening to Sirius XM radio in the car that I heard her radio show for the first time. She was a fixture on NPR, but her daytime political talk show originating from WAMU in Washington DC was broadcast from midnight to 2 a.m. in Seattle. I completely missed it for years.

Her show’s call-in talk format impressed me with the variety of viewpoints expressed by her invited guests and the meatiness and high level of their civil discourse.

From the beginning I was curious about the woman who hosted the show, and her story turned out to be a remarkable one. A Washington native, she began her career in 1973 as a secretary at the local NPR station WAMU. Without a college degree, but smart and hard working, she was quickly promoted to the position of associate producer and within five years had taken over the political talk show. Her tenure lasted 37 years and her audience became a national one. She broadcast her final Diane Rehm Show on December 23, 2016.

When I first heard Diane, I knew nothing about her, and radio can be deceiving. Despite the intelligence she exhibited, I wondered about her background as I pictured a frail sounding older woman. I soon discovered she suffers from a rare disease called spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that affects the voice box and accounts for why she sounded so old and frail. Imagine my surprise when I went to hear her read from her new book, On My Own, and encountered this beautiful, fashionably dressed 80 year-old woman in stiletto heels.

On her final broadcast her fans, including John Dickerson of CBS News and Tom Brokaw of NBC called in to wish her well and explain how her attention to detail and always civil discourse on political matters informed their own approach to the news. But while Diane has broadcast her final WAMU radio show she is not finished with public life. She will continue to tape podcasts for NPR, but her new career is as an advocate for medical aid in dying, or so called “death with dignity” legislation.

Her book, On My Own, tells the story of her 50-year marriage to David Rehm, a State Department official, who died an agonizing death from the complications of Parkinson’s Disease. Terminally ill and unable to feed himself, he requested medical assistance from his physician in an effort to end his life humanely and painlessly on his own terms, but the two of them were unable to circumvent DC laws. Without medical aid, he forced himself to stop taking food and water to hasten his death, but the process was long and painful. Diane was so moved by David’s experience that she wrote On My Own about their journey. Currently, there are only four states that have death with dignity or assisted suicide statutes and she has become a spokeswoman and advocate for the legislation across the country. Her focus and devotion reminds me that there is always work to be done and new horizons to keep in view.

______

You wouldn’t think whiskey and cigarettes would produce a model of exemplary behavior, but today’s second passage might make you change your mind. It’s another remarkable passage and one that touched me personally. Last year, Chuck Feeney, the 85-year-old founder of Duty Free Stores (airport purveyors of duty free liquor, cigarettes, etc.) went broke – by design. It wasn’t a headline grabbing bankruptcy or squandered inheritance. Chuck Feeney was and is a philanthropist’s philanthropist. The publicity shy entrepreneur was an early signer of the Bill Gates/Warren Buffett “Giving Pledge,” agreeing to give away the majority of his fortune. From 1986 through 2016, Chuck gave away roughly $8 billion. Today, he lives modestly in a rented apartment in San Francisco.

In 1982 Chuck created Atlantic Philanthropies and secretly transferred his share of Duty Free Stores (roughly $500 million) to the foundation and started giving the money away. Unlike most philanthropists, Mr. Feeney was determined to give away all of the foundation’s assets and sunset the organization in just a few years. It took him 30. His last grant of $7 million to Cornell University was made in December.

In 2009 I went to work for East Meets West Foundation in Saigon. Ten years earlier my friend, Mark Stewart, a Vietnam vet, was doing work as the volunteer country director for East Meets West, and one afternoon when he was in EMW headquarters in Oakland, he got a call from Chuck inviting him to meet in his San Francisco office.

Mark knew nothing about Chuck but was hoping to get a small donation out of the visit. After some small talk and questioning to see if he was a Raiders of ‘49ers fan, Chuck could see Mark’s frustration. Feeney told him not to worry, he had studied EMW and thought the organization was doing good work. As the meeting came to a close Chuck handed him a check for $200,000, and told him that there was more where that came from if he did a good job with it. Over the next 10 years Atlantic Philanthropies contributed many millions of dollars to EMW to build schools, hospitals, and other projects that improved the infrastructure of EMW educational and medical programs in Vietnam. I never met Chuck but his generosity and humanity made my job easy and made the lives of thousands of Vietnamese better. He is a great model for all of us when we consider just how much we really need and how much difference we can make if we share it intelligently.

Tomorrow, in Part Two, I’ll share two more passages that made a difference to me in 2016. Hang in there, I think he’s going to self-destruct. In the meantime read this; we need something to look forward to.

Categories : Books, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· December 28, 2016

· 3 Comments

Beirut to Jerusalem…

Fifty-one years ago, this week, I was in East Jerusalem surrounded by the past, confronting the present, and trying to imagine the future, but I was also energized to be in the place where King David reigned, Mohammed walked, and Christ died.

On Christmas Eve, at an Episcopal Mass in Seattle, I had difficulty focusing on the sermon and though the subject matter was mainstream – fake “post-truth” news and the birth of Christ – my mind was in that earlier time and place. As the Bishop spoke I thought about the Holy Land as crucible, how it was 51 years ago, how it is now, and what the differences mean to all of us.

Israel was 17 years’ old in 1965 – a baby state. I was 27 years old, a baby myself. We were just 10 years apart in age, the Jewish state and I. Its people were ecstatic, determined, and hopeful with thousands of immigrants flooding into the newly established promised land. I was young, optimistic, and seeing the wider world for the first time. But there were signs of trouble; I couldn’t cross the border from East Jerusalem into Israel because the stamp in my passport prevented me from crossing back to the Arab world, and I was aware that though the Jews had their new homeland the indigenous Arab population and thousands of displaced Palestinians did not. I was naïve. I thought everything could be worked out.

I was there in the Middle East mostly by default. After six weeks on the island of Crete I wanted to see more of the Levant and flew to Beirut on a student ticket. On the way I met a small group of Peace Corps volunteers traveling on Christmas leave from their posts in Turkey. In Beirut they were joined by Bonnie Landes, another volunteer, who had traveled from her village by bus. I was invited to join the group and over the course of the next few days we became friends and explored Beirut.

Pre-war Beirut was one of the world’s great cities. Situated on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean it was a blended culture of French, British, Christian, Muslim, and Arab populations. In the ‘60s it was the commercial and cultural center of the Levant. Oil companies from Saudi Arabia and North Africa were headquartered there. Modern business interests contrasted with the ancient gold souk. French cuisine competed for my taste buds with Muslim halal, and the Casino du Liban featured Paris-like Lido shows with showgirls who were oggled, purchased, and feted by Arab sheikhs.

After a week in the Paris of the Middle East I was ready to move on, but the Peace Corps group wanted to stay. All, that is, except Bonnie who was as curious as I was about seeing more of the Holy Land. When I asked if she wanted to share a ride to Jerusalem she didn’t hesitate. The two of us took off the next morning in a “dolmus” or shared taxi with two Arab locals to drive to Jerusalem via Damascus and Amman.

This new adventure was as exotic as anything I had ever done, crossing from the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, through the cedar covered mountains of Lebanon, and down to the sand colored plains of Syria. The drive was uneventful, for me, but in Damascus Bonnie asked me to change places with her because the Arab seated next to her had active hands. When we rearranged ourselves and I moved to the middle his hands quieted down.

The stop at the central market square in Damascus, where we dropped off one passenger and pick up another, gave us time to look around. I’d never been anywhere like it – the noise, the smells, the sights. There were Arabs in caftans and keffiyehs, businessmen in suits, camels and donkeys bleating and defecating, sidewalk vendors selling everything from pots and pans to Persian carpets. And… a square full of Arab men shamelessly staring at my pretty blond companion.

After the stop in Damascus we continued on our way to Jerusalem and for the next few days, leading up to Christmas, we explored the old city and nearby historic sites – Bethlehem, Jericho and Petra. We looked in on the Church of the Nativity and walked the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa. At the Jordan River, barely a trickle at that point, we watched American folksinger, Julie Felix, sing Michael Row the Boat Ashore for a documentary film crew while sitting in a rowboat on the muddy ditch that was the Jordan.

After the Jewish state was established in 1948, the holy city of Jerusalem, sacred to the world’s three great religions, was divided in half. The modern Western portion was incorporated into the new state, and the “Old City,” including the holy sites of The Wailing Wall, Dome of the Rock, and the Via Dolorosa ceded to the bordering state of Jordan. That was the situation when I was there in 1965.

I loved the old city. Arab vendors sitting cross-legged on Turkish carpets surrounded by open burlap bags of coffee, tea, and spices. Pilgrims in sackcloth walking the Stations of the Cross with enormous wooden crosses and crowns of thorns. Coptic and Orthodox priests preaching to small crowds on street corners. Hasidic Jews with side curls and black hats walking ahead as their families followed a few paces behind. Tour guides giving their spiels to camera-loaded tourists. It was a feast for the eyes, ears, and nostrils.

In 1967 that world was gone. The world I had seen was gone in six days… With a preemptive strike Israeli aircraft destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian air forces and exposed Egyptian ground troops in the Sinai to the well-armed, well-trained Israeli military. In six days it was all over and Israel was in control of the Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, the Old City, and Golan Heights. It has been that way ever since.

Many have tried to work out a solution that would accommodate both Israel and the Palestinians who have never found their own homeland. In 1979 Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s President and Menachem Begin of Israel signed a peace treaty based on Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords. Sadat was later murdered by Muslim extremists and the deal fell apart. Then in 1993 the Oslo Accords were proposed by Bill Clinton as a setup for a two-state solution, and the agreement was signed by Yitzhak Rabin for Israel and Yasser Arafat for the Palestinians. But, Oslo II was never signed and the plan fell through again. Rabin was murdered and Israel made a hard turn to the right with Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

Since then, under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel has expanded its control over the West Bank, building new settlements in the occupied area and denying Palestinian residents free movement. Last Friday the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution censuring Israel and demanding immediate cessation of West Bank expansion. The vote was 14-0 (including France, UK, Spain, Japan, Russia, China, Egypt, and New Zealand) with the US abstaining.

In the thin-skinned manner of Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at President Obama for his “shameful ambush” of the Jewish state while threatening the other Security Council members with retribution. The Jewish settlements are in clear violation of international law, most notably UN Resolution 242 passed in 1967 and agreed to by both sides in laying out the parameters of a negotiated two-state agreement. Netanyahu’s Israel is not the Israel of Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, or Shimon Peres. His leadership style is that of a bully with his foot on the neck of a poor neighbor. I, for one, am proud that my President had the courage to stand up to Netanyahu’s shameless expansionism.

Now what? Jimmy Carter recently offered a solution in his book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Another is being proposed by a Jewish organization called J Street that advocates an end to settlement expansion and promotion of a Palestinian state. Ari Shavit, the Israeli writer of My Problem Land, sees doom for Israel if it doesn’t craft a solution that provides for its Arab population and others displaced by the Jewish state.

I don’t have a solution. I just know that paranoia and aggressive, disrespectful, expansionist behavior is not moving either side toward a viable solution. Today (December 28) Secretary of State John Kerry answered Netanyahu and outlined the US position by offering a punch list of steps that could lead to reopened negotiations and a two-state solution. I believe there are other moderates who are capable of crafting a diplomatic solution. They may have to go back to earlier agreements and appeal to new partners, but nothing will be accomplished as long as the Israeli leadership remains intransigent and inflexible. I understand that the solution needs to ensure Israel’s security, but simultaneously it needs to respect the humanity of the Palestinian people. It requires creative diplomacy, less saber rattling and strong international support to back it up.

Though I’m discouraged by the current state of affairs, my time in the Middle East was life altering. I learned to listen and appreciate how other cultures lived, sounded, looked, smelled and tasted. I learned to appreciate their differences, and I made a lifelong friend in Bonnie Landes.

Bonnie returned to her Peace Corps post when we parted. She met and married an American-educated Turk, had a son (American college educated), worked at the American Embassy in Ankara for 30+ years and retired recently. We’ve seen each other twice in the years since our days in Beirut and Jerusalem, once in Chicago when she was home visiting her family and once in Ankara when I was on a Pan Am layover.

It’s always fun to see her although there was some serious tension attending the Ankara visit. When she came to the hotel she let me know that her husband was out of town and if her brother-in-law caught us together he would kill us both. And… that was before “radical Islamic extremism.” We ended up talking in my room instead of the bar. Today, she’s divorced and back in the States, although she and her son still have deep ties to Turkey.

I don’t know what triggered the Christmas Eve memories. I’ve been to many midnight services at St. Mark’s in the last 15 years. I love the smells and bells, the rituals, the music, and the vestments., but that night something triggered the memory that took me back to Christmas Eve in Jerusalem 51 years ago and a deep gratitude for both the memories and the friendship.

Epilogue

My one small regret about the 1965 experience is that I don’t have any pictures from that time. My father gave me a small Argus C3 camera when I graduated from college and though I loved other people’s photographs I hated the whole complicated and expensive process of buying film, changing rolls, waiting for the pictures to be developed and then throwing away all but a handful. I gave away the Argus the day before I left on this trip because I didn’t want to be fumbling with the camera and missing the experience in front of me.

Today I’m infatuated with the iPhone camera and use it indiscriminately. I’m only sorry I don’t have pictures from those Middle Eastern adventures. My memories of the sights are extraordinary and I don’t regret the decision to ditch the camera but I wish I had those missing images. I’ve picked a few pictures off the Internet but they don’t really tell the story.

Categories : Books, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· December 14, 2016

· No Comments

The Perfect Latte…

“When you aim for perfection you discover it’s a moving target.”

Geoffrey Fisher – Archbishop of Canterbury (1945-1961)

There are many strictures and cautionary tales about the pursuit of perfection and though the target may be elusive sometimes it’s all about the chase.

The Surviving Seattle blog began in the fall of 2012 as an antidote to the weather I hate in the city I love. I was looking for strategies to mitigate against the gray overcast, constant rain, and penetrating cold. I love writing this column and for the most part it’s kept the weather from defeating my optimism. I’ve written about films and food, books and bikes, art and architecture – even politics – but I’ve barely touched on the thing that gets me up and ready to open the front door and face the gloom. What is it? What keeps me charged up, optimistic, and hopeful? Of course, it’s COFFEE and my quest for the perfect cup.

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about your mother’s Folgers, not what the Germans derisively refer to as braunes wasser (brown water), or what you get at the diner poured from an onion shaped glass pot that’s been sitting on a hot plate for hours.

With all due respect, I know there are those who prefer a fine tasting cup of “drip” coffee, and there are aficionados who brew it lovingly with carefully measured Arabica beans, time it with a digital timer, and pour it cautiously through a Melitta paper filter. There are others who like theirs pressed carefully down through a Pyrex French Press carafe, but for more than 40 years the only real coffee for me is the one and only forcibly extruded, crema-topped, high octane, Italian-style espresso – singolo, doppio, macchiato, cappuccino, or caffe latte.

Pursuit of the perfect espresso drink is like rocket science. The task is to match the right payload with the right delivery system. Even the most expensive beans roasted to perfection are wasted if the brewing system is inadequate. If the payload is too heavy the resulting coffee is too strong, too weak, too acidic, or just sludge. On the other hand, if the beans are old, over-roasted, or too green what ends up there is equally unsatisfying. The rocket fizzles or the payload is a dud. The payload isn’t right for the delivery system or the delivery system can’t lift the payload.

I realize this tech talk and metaphor is a little over the top, but to those of us who LOVE the pursuit is a form of foreplay. It’s disconcerting to hear myself talk about the quest, the knight errant, or foreplay when what we’re really talking about is a cup of coffee, but the search for perfection is also about obsessive compulsive behavior. I own it. I am OCD about coffee.

Here’s a condensed history of the quest: I learned to love espresso on my first trip to Europe in 1965. California in those days was just discovering the joys of espresso. Since then the Starbucks revolution has brought espresso to the people and in recent years I have been able to find near perfection in commercial settings like the caffe latte (at the top of the page) from the Urth Caffe in Santa Monica but I’ve never been able to reproduce it at home.

My first at-home effort was a basic, no-frills, stove top espresso pot like that found in most Italian homes:

Here it is. It does the job. It supplies a jolt. It gets the engine started in the morning, but its primitive technology lacks the finesse and fine art of Italian coffee making – the kind I came to love that’s available in any corner coffee bar in Italy. The stovetop’s simplicity and efficiency are its strengths but for a sophisticated modernist looking for a superior end product it doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t grind the beans, time the brewing cycle, or steam the milk. It tends to be dark, dark, dark. Powerful but acidic. Still, it is the brew of some espresso purists.

The stove top was the standard until a few years ago when Nestle, the food conglomerate, aware of the espresso revolution and sensing the need for a more sophisticated home system, created a subsidiary brand called Nespresso and developed an automatic machine with prepackaged coffee capsules. Nespresso was an instant hit with a system that simplified all the functions.

The Nespresso Cube was the prototype (below). It heated the water and forced it through individual foil-wrapped single shot capsules. It didn’t heat or froth the milk, but Nespresso solve that problem with a separate milk frother accessory called the Aeroccino to deliver a creamy foam. Now cappuccino lovers had a simple home system.

Nespresso created that simple system – but the coffee was expensive. Individual capsules cost between 80 cents and a dollar each. Two shots, at home, cost around $2, not that much less than a latte at Starbucks or your local drive thru.

I tried a Cube for a couple of years until the next improvement came along – the Latissima – a machine that incorporated the milk frothing function and cutting edge Italian design. It also came in colors. That was important to Marilynn who is a color coordinator par excellance. Her at home color scheme is black, red, and stainless. The Latissima comes in Chinese lacquer red, the same Chinese lacquer red as the walls that wrap from the living room to our bedroom.

So we upgraded and updated to the state of the art Latissima.

Remember the Archbishop’s quote about perfection? It’s a moving target and the Latissima is not the Holy Grail. It’s “adequate” but can’t quite deliver the perfect coffee. I tried a dozen different capsule flavors and intensities. They come in various categories with descriptions that might reasonably be mistaken for something out of the Wine Spectator. Intensities are rated on a scale of 1 to 10. But, bells and whistles aside, the Nespresso capsules are expensive and the machines don’t have the muscle to deliver a coffee that stays hot like a commercial latte and hits the tongue with impact.

All this time my OCD was idling in the background because despite the variety of Nespresso offerings I was never able to find the payload or delivery vehicle that met my taste, texture, or warmth needs. It is a good system for delivering a simple, quick, one step coffee, but not necessarily a satisfying one.

My particular problem, in addition to OCD and time spent in Italy, springs from the fact that 25 years ago I owned an Italian café that featured a commercial 220 volt, 3 Group, Faema machine, the 747 of espresso delivery systems. I was trained to make espresso drinks by Vida, a young woman who learned her craft at Torrefazione, Seattle’s most famous Italian-style roaster. There, every morning before the restaurant opened, a group of friends – including the owner of the Elephant’s Perch mountaineering store next door, the Forest Service snow ranger, and others – gathered at the Piccolo bar where I brewed frothy bowls of caffe latte for them to kick start the day. I know the coffee taste I’m looking for.

The truth is that I’ve known for a long time that it’s possible to make that coffee at home. The problem is that it’s not cheap. I always hoped the next iteration of the home machine would be able to duplicate the true strength and flavor of Italy. I was looking for a bargain, and it’s clear to me now that you get what you pay for.

A year ago I went skiing at Whistler with my friend, Tim Shields, who is as particular as I am about his coffee. Tim made the leap to an expensive machine a few years ago, and on our first morning at Whistler he brewed up a delicious latte on his DiLonghi Magnifica 3300. That did it.

Last week I ordered one, and here it is. I made my first cups yesterday. It takes a little practice to get the grind (yes, it grinds the beans), portion size (yes, adjustable), steamer/frother operation (yes, commercial grade), cleaning protocol, and find the right beans, but it is indeed Magnifica.

Marilynn is amused, but she’s also relieved. She no longer has to listen to my complaints about how my coffee doesn’t taste right or stay warm. It doesn’t last until I’m through reading the NY Times (but would any cup of hot liquid last that long?).

We’ll know soon if the quest is over, if the Holy Grail of home-brewed espresso has been found. My friend, Julie, has a daughter who works at Starbucks headquarters and she is bringing me a variety of beans to try out this week. Right now, I’m in the honeymoon phase and the target seems to have stopped moving. It looks and tastes just right – and with an Amaretti cookie dipped in the crema… Oh my God, we could be on the Via Veneto.

Categories : Fashion/Lifestyle, Food/Restaurants, Personal/Family, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Posted by jdbernard743

· December 6, 2016

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Remembering a Friend…

Often, as the year draws to a close, my thoughts return to friends who departed the planet earlier than they should have. Those memories remind me that we never achieved a natural closure – that their premature deaths inflicted wounds that are slow to heal.

Gary Gibson Stoecker is one of those friends. Gary and I were young Pan Am pilots when we met in 1972. We both lived in Mill Valley, flew out of San Francisco, and our lives continued to parallel each other as we moved on to Ketchum Idaho in 1973 and Berlin in the late ’70’s.

We shared a number of interests but we were different, most notably that I was married and Gary was not. He was a lifelong bachelor whose closest companion in the early years of our friendship was his dog, Jomo. There’s a line in the song Mr. Bojangles where the singer says, “After 20 years he still grieves” referring to the death of his dog. That might have been Gary’s truth too. I never spent time with Gary that we didn’t talk about Jomo.

Jomo Kenyatta Stoecker was a muscular black Labrador with all the traits familiar to those who know the breed. He loved Gary, loved chasing balls, loved chasing birds, and most of all he loved the water – any water. Gary named him after the African chief who was the first freely elected president of Kenya.

My wife loved Gary and Jomo too, and during the Ketchum years we were Jomo’s surrogate parents. Gary would drop him off at our house when he left for work and pick him up when he returned a week or two later. We had three young kids, an acre of lawn, and a river running along the back side of the property. Jomo loved it there.

Sometime in the mid ‘80’s Gary was promoted to Captain and transferred to New York. He sold his house in Ketchum and moved to Connecticut where he rented a new home fronting on Long Island Sound. Jomo was aging and slowing down, but still loved chasing balls, birds, and swimming in the Sound

Eventually, arthritis limited his mobility and about that time an annoying goose appeared on Gary’s property. The bird sensed Jomo’s limitations and took great delight in tormenting him from the water’s edge. Jomo would stand and bark but wasn’t able to chase him down. Then, one day late in the fall, the goose appeared and started to taunt him. Jomo stood, barked, shook himself, and gave chase. The surprised goose took off across the lawn with Jomo in pursuit then into the cold waters of the Sound. The last Gary saw of them the dog was still swimming far from shore. He never made it back, and Gary and I agreed it seemed a fitting final act for the big retriever.

Gary always lived well but he wasn’t much interested in material things unless they engaged him in other ways. He owned houses in Mill Valley and Ketchum, a sailboat when he was based in Miami, and two racy little Porsche’s over the course of his lifetime, but he was never flashy or showy. Surprisingly, though he was smart, affluent and good looking, he never found the right woman to share his life. He dated beautiful, intelligent women but never had a serious long term relationship I knew about. It may just be that he couldn’t find a woman as beautiful, loving, or loyal as Jomo. My former wife, who was his good friend, talked to him about it often and thought it was a tragic waste. I thought his high standards combined with his desire not to disappoint others made it hard to commit to that kind of a relationship.

As an engineering grad from UC Berkeley he could have had a lucrative career in the private sector, but he was restless, endlessly curious and loved adventure, so instead of engineering he followed his father’s footsteps as a Pan Am pilot just after graduating from college. I think that choice haunted him. He always wondered what his life would have been like if he had taken that other fork in the road. He talked about it openly and often.

As it was, he had big shoes to fill; his father was a tall, former USC football player, who became a senior Pan Am Captain (with a reputation as a womanizer – something that probably played a role in Gary’s decision to remain a bachelor). Nevertheless, Gary’s restless nature led him successively from San Francisco to Ketchum, Berlin, Miami, and Connecticut during his years as a Pan Am pilot.

After the loss of Jomo, Gary never seemed to find a real home. When Abby and I visited him at his apartment in Greenwich, Connecticut the room was lined with unopened moving boxes – and he’d been there for a year.

In 1997 Gary’s life took a turn for the worse. He was flying the Delta Shuttle between New York and Boston, after Delta’s acquisition of Pan Am assets. That summer he met Delia Cabe, a Boston-based science writer, who shared his wide ranging curiosity and interests. Their friendship grew and they spent time more and more time together over the next few months.

That fall he expressed concern about his health to Delia. He was also having bouts of depression. She encouraged him to see a physician but he resisted, saying that he didn’t trust them and didn’t want Delta to find out he was seeking medical help on the outside. That fall he took a medical leave to sort things out. Around Christmas, because of his increasing symptoms, Delia pressured him to consult a neurologist in Boston. Within days, Gary was admitted to Beth Israel Hospital where he underwent surgery for glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. He was 53.

Following this devastating diagnosis, Delia and Gary became a team whose mission was to beat the odds and overcome the glioblastoma. They moved Gary out of his Connecticut apartment and into Delia’s in Boston. She was a great companion and resource – smart, connected, and scientifically sophisticated. Gary had always been interested in science but this was personal – it was a life and death struggle. Together they devoted themselves to Gary’s case. Over the course of his treatment, including three surgeries, chemo, and radiation Delia provided a home base, exhaustive research, accompanied him on doctor visits, cooked his meals, and helped manage his care and treatment.

Delia and I became friends during this period, and the three of us talked often about his condition, treatment, and progress. In the beginning we were all optimistic, but when I think about the Kubler-Ross stages of grief I realize we were all suspended, with fingers crossed, in the “denial” phase.

I’m not good on the phone, but during his illness I found a place in myself where I could be of use just by being available to him, to Delia, and to others to talk over the situation and be a friend.

Gary was very private but his diagnosis took our friendship to a new level. I learned that there was a woman in Miami, he wanted kept in the loop. Ria, was a Miami-based flight attendant, with a child, who seemed particularly close to Gary. Delia told me she thought Gary felt bad about the way their romance had broken off, and later in the evolution of his illness Gary told me he wanted to do something for Ria – leave her something if and when he passed away. Gary had many girlfriends, but Ria was the only one that was part of our conversations during his illness.

We all deal with grief in different ways; when I tried to follow up with Ria in 2012 she told me that Gary had, indeed, left her something but she felt my call was an invasion of her privacy and asked me not to call again. I respected her wishes.

The final phase of Gary’s illness wasn’t pretty. After his third surgery he had a psychotic episode and became physically threatening. Delia contacted the doctor and together they were able to get Gary to the hospital where he was sequestered in a psych unit. He flew into a rage when he realized he was being restrained and he blamed Delia for everything. The hospital held him but neglected to take his cellphone, so he called Bob and asked him to come and get him out of there.

The next day brother Bob flew to Boston and Gary under heavy sedation was taken to California. He was seriously failing, irrational, depressed, and lashing out. Bob flew with him home to California but left him with his parents, then in their ‘80’s. Delia, who had devoted 18 months to Gary’s care, never saw him again, though he did call her several times after his return to California. Gary’s folks also kept her in the loop and up to date on Gary’s condition. They appreciated what she had done for him and knew she had nothing to do with his breakdown.

Bob, on the other hand, blamed her for everything, including Gary’s failed medical treatment. As an interesting aside, she told me that when they heard about the tumor, prior to the first surgery, Bob and the parents had flown to Boston, and as he was being taken to surgery Gary had pulled her into a women’s restroom and told her that Bob was a bully and told her not to let him bully her. Interesting in the light of the way events played out.

I was living in Salt Lake City when Gary returned to California, and we continued to talk. I told him I wanted to visit and he seemed pleased. It was a hard decision and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I had no idea what he would be like, what kind of shape he was in, or what I would say once I was there, but I flew to San Jose, rented a car and drove to the Stoecker home in Los Altos Hills.

I was startled when I saw him. Women regarded him as movie star handsome and flocked to him accordingly. Facing me was a poor facsimile of the Gary I knew. He looked bad. His clothes were rumpled. He’d lost weight and was unshaven. He was glad to see me but not himself—spacey is the word that comes to mind. We both knew what was coming. He was unsteady and stumbled when he walked. His parents greeted me cordially then left us alone. We talked for a couple of hours, then he asked if I would take him out for a drive. He wanted me to help him buy a suit. His nephew was getting married, and he needed one for the wedding.

It was an interesting afternoon. We drove to a lookout spot above Palo Alto where we talked a little, then made a quick stop at Bob’s house. I had never met him, but I felt he was suspicious of me or my motives for being there. He might have worried that someone outside the family would take advantage of Gary, but in view of the warning Gary gave Delia I have a different, less generous perspective.

After the stop at Bob’s, we drove to Nordstrom in Palo Alto. I must have parked the car near the entrance; I don’t remember. I do recall getting a wheel chair and wheeling Gary to the men’s department where I explained to the saleswoman that Gary needed a suit for his nephew’s wedding. Privately I told her why Gary looked and acted as he did. She understood and couldn’t have been more professional. All the time I was thinking that this suit was really going to be for his own burial. Maybe he’ll last long enough to wear it to the wedding, but it’s really his burial wardrobe. Gary and I settled on a medium gray suit with a dark pinstripe and bought a dress shirt and tie to go with it. I made arrangements for the family to pick up the suit after it was altered.

I drove Gary home and left for the airport. I never heard from the family again. When Gary died a few months later I called Bob to ask about the funeral. The call was obviously unwelcome, and I was made to feel that I was prying into the family’s private business. I haven’t spoken to him since.

I’m not sure there was a funeral. When I searched Google for an obituary I couldn’t find one though I found them for Stoeck (his father) and Winnie (his mother) both of whom died a few years later.

I’ve lived long enough to watch others grieve the death of a friend, lover, or family member and to have experienced all of them myself. There are many manifestations of grief. Some are mysterious. Some are devastating. Some are angry, and some are simply sad, but I’m always drawn to those who are generous and dignified as they work through the process. I never understood Ria’s hostility or Bob’s suspicions. I didn’t know them as friends and we didn’t share our friendships with Gary. They each had a different relationship with him. I was an outsider to them. I have never gotten over Gary’s early passing. 53 is not old. I have a son older than that. It’s unimaginable to think of him without friends, adventures, and a future.

I think about Gary fairly often and he continues to pop up like this at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think about all the years we missed out on together, but also about the gift he gave me near the end of his life. Delia Cabe, his friend and caregiver, became my friend and has remained so since his passing. We see each other on Facebook almost every day. She’s married to a college professor now and has a new book coming out in June, Storied Bars of New York, about the bars where writers go to drink in The Big Apple – a subject near the center of my world. Yesterday we talked on the phone for over an hour. Life does go on and we do our best to make a difference until our time is up.

Gary and I led very different lives – my three wives and three children contrasted with his lifelong bachelor existence – but our lives intersected in a special way. We appreciated our differences and shared common interests. This remembrance is a celebration of friendship and memory. It’s about the loss of a friend and the 19 years he missed out on. It would have been fun.

In the best of all possible scenarios Gary and Jomo are together again. Maybe, in the words of Peter Matthiessen, they’re “at play in the fields of the Lord.”