Canada Day State Of Mind ...Talk To Me Of Mendocino.

On even years like this one C, E, e and me are not usually in the country on July 1st.

This year though, for all kinds of reasons, some good, some not so, (this is the part of blogging where the affect gets flattened), we are still here...

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When we lived in the East Bay, which is quite a long time ago now, we met L and F.

L worked with C at a parent co-op daycare up in the hills that is pretty much all that you could ever imagine Berkeley to be, just writ slightly smaller.

L's husband F. was a teacher. He started in the early 70's when things were good and spent most of his career in the Richmond Unified School District where things got pretty bad after Proposition 13 sucked everything out of everything, especially in poor places like Richmond where, to the best of my knowledge, there are no software or biotech companies of significance, but there are still big oil refineries.

Anyway...

When E was born just a stone's throw away from Michael Chabon's end of Telegraph Avenue in Oakland,  L and F helped us out a lot - their kids were all pretty much grown up by then. In a small way they became surrogate home-away-from-home parents.

And unlike the fellow science geeks I worked with up at the other end of Telegraph, all of whom scattered to the four corners of the earth after their apprenticeships were done, L and F stayed put, which meant that we would always visit them at their El Cerrito home (El Cerrito, by the way, is where those crazy Fogerty boys grew up).

But in the year 2002 all of that changed because L and F retired and moved up the coast to build their dream home on cliffs that overlook the beach just over the Mendocino county line in Gualala. That was the year that littler e. was three and Bigger E. was nine, and we have been hightailing it down to see them as soon as school ends every second summer ever since.

Because of the timing it means we pretty much have two national holidays with them when we are there, usually with themes, both in the same week....First it's Canada Day on July 1st and then it's Independence Day on the 4th.

The photo at the top of the post is from 2010 - Em was then 17 and eva was 9. I think the theme that year was nautical or perhaps it was faux Republican (ha!). Then again, maybe the hats were only a buck apiece at the Pay 'N Take.

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So.

Since we are still up here instead of down there this year, I decided to try something by two other Canadian sisters, the McGarrigles, who once wrote a timeless tune about seeing America right...

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I had forgotten how much I liked this song until I heard it again for the first time in years at Ian Reid's memorial a few weeks ago...It was one of his favourites...Which was another good reason to give it a try...Apologies for the slightly dirgy quality to the thing but I just can't soar like Kate and Anna, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the tempo up...
And, ya, that 'Seeing America Right' business at the end of the post was, indeed, a reference to Mr. Darnielle's 'anti-Mendocino Manifesto'...
We're hoping to get down to L and F's place later in the summer...I'm pretty sure it will happen.
One last thing...If you are in downtown Victoria this Canada Day you might catch E. doing her musical thing somewhere around Market Square and the surrounding environs...


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