in my ‘hood – Oh Fair New Mexico

Opting out of Oppenheimer: My Father’s Atomic Obsession

Posted on September 4, 2023September 4, 2023
by Karen Fayeth
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The American tale of a nuclear family

A color photo of a mushroom cloud from an atomic text at Nevada Test Site in 1957. The photo is very orange with the top of the mushroom cloud in very bright light. — One of many photos of mushroom clouds found in my family’s archives. This one is a rather well-known public photo of a nuclear test done in 1957 at the Nevada Test Site. Here is a link to a color-corrected version found in the University of Las Vegas archives.

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In July 1945 the first detonation of a nuclear weapon happened in the New Mexico desert. It happened at a place called the Trinity Site. Until just a few months ago, a large part of the modern world had forgotten, didn’t know, or didn’t really care about that fact.

The movie Oppenheimer has brought the story behind the evolution of the atomic bomb back to the mainstream, making it both hashtag-able and trending.

I have conflicting feelings about that.

You see, that horrible, fantastic, historic moment in New Mexico also sparked something important inside my father. A young man of 14 at the time and living in South Bend, Indiana, after the events of that first test of the atomic bomb, my father was enamored with and fascinated by the science and mechanics of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

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My dad was born smack dab in the middle of eight children. He and his brother Bob were so-called “Irish Twins,” born eleven months apart and inseparable. My dad, named Tom, was small because he had been sickly as a child, and he was awkward. His brother Bob was big and convivial. They were quite a duo. Both smart and funny and full of life. Abbott and Costello of the Midwest.

Tom was not that good in school, mostly likely due to undiagnosed dyslexia, but he had an aptitude for math. After high school, he got a technical certification from DeVry in Chicago. In 1957 he was recruited as an electronic technician by Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You’ve probably heard of the infamous laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. If you saw the Oppenheimer movie, you may have learned about it there. Oppenheimer’s work built that research lab and he also served as the Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1943 to 1945.

But there is another National Laboratory in New Mexico, and that lab was also engaged in the research and science behind nuclear weapons. Sandia National Laboratory is a larger lab than Los Alamos and is located in Albuquerque.

In the late 1950s, at Sandia, my dad had found his way to the heart of the work being done in nuclear research during the early days of the Cold War.

It was work he would embrace and love doing for more than forty years.

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My dad was a complete nerd. Glasses, pocket protector, pants too short with white socks. All of that, right to the stereotype.

He was also smart, socially awkward, but gregarious enough. People liked ol’ Tom and he liked people.

In the Fall of 1958, while working at Sandia he met a pretty young secretary (back when that was still the job title). She had moved from Oregon to New Mexico at first to help her brother take care of his kids, and later she was also hired on to work for Sandia.

In Albuquerque in the 1950s, Sandia was a really good employer. Still is, actually.

My mother was young, single, and worked at a job that was located on an air force base. What I mean to say is that she was surrounded by young and available men.

My mom dated a bit and she and her roommates had their youthful fun. Then my beautiful mom met my nerdy dad, and so began their story.

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After that first nuclear test happened at the Trinity Site, in the years that followed, there were plenty more tests of nuclear weapons. My joke has always been that those years were about, “Hey, let’s blow this up to see what happens,” but all of those tests were nothing to joke about. They really were testing multiple forms of weaponry to better understand the power and capabilities.

Two places where nuclear weapons testing occurred for decades are a group of small islands in the Pacific Ocean and in the desert in a dry lake bed between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada.

It was in 1958 that my dad found himself out on an island called Bikini Atoll, doing telemetry for several tests of thermonuclear explosions.

After returning home, he then found himself sent out to the Salton Sea, where ballistics tests were being carried out. Family scrapbooks contain really goofy and incredibly embarrassing love letters from my dad to my mom, quick missives sent during the time while they were dating but not yet married. Letters postmarked from the Salton Sea in California.

Once my parents were married and after the birth of my brother, my dad went back to school at the University of New Mexico to complete his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He had been told if he wanted to continue to grow in his career at Sandia, he’d need a full degree. So he worked and went to school. My mom worked and took care of her firstborn.

Later, he got a job opportunity to go to Los Alamos with the hope of improving his career by working on a particle accelerator. He moved his wife and son and began work up the hill and the small but mighty lab. Los Alamos was considered more prestigious.

My mom was also able to get a job at the lab in Los Alamos, and they lived and worked and really enjoyed living there. This was the mid 1960’s and things were hopping. Soon enough, my sister was born.

Then came a job opportunity through a good friend that promised even better career advancement if my dad would move over to the Nevada Test Site, which back then was called the Tonopah Test Range.

While working at the Nevada Test Site, my dad worked in an area of the site called Area 52. You know… just next door to Area 51*?

And it was there in Tonopah that I enter the story. My folks had only really planned for two kids, but oops. I guess I had something to say.

Not long after I was born, the family then moved back to Albuquerque and Sandia National Laboratory, and that is where I was raised. I have only vague memories of Nevada, I was really too young to remember anything.

New Mexico is where I’m from and who I am. Something I remain proud of and always will.

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Growing up I loved going through my family’s photo albums. My mom was an avid scrapbooker and so I would spend hours poring over all of the bits of bobs of her history.

My dad also kept plenty of photos. He would get unclassified photos from many of the projects he worked on and keep them as mementos.

I guess back then I never thought it was weird that our family photo albums contained images of mushroom clouds. Not just one or two, a bunch. My dad avidly collected images and details of the site and what was tested.

Black and white photos of various equipment were also to be found in those scrapbooks. And brochures and technical manuals. My dad spent a career fascinated with and dedicated to the development of nuclear weapons and later, nuclear energy.

A black and white photo of four columns of old style mechanical equipment with knobs and readout windows. This was likely testing or monitoring equipment used at Bikini Atoll during the many nuclear tests that were conducted. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos, this was in a folder of photos that appear to be from Bikini Atoll. Didn’t everyone have photos like this in their family photo albums?

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Growing up during the Cold War in New Mexico was maybe a little different than it was for kids in other states. A lot of our playground chatter was about whether or not the Russians would drop a bomb on New Mexico if the so often threatened nuclear war began.

We’d debate the merits of running toward ground zero or running away from it. Was it better to be immediately vaporized, a shadow on a wall like those horrific photos from Hiroshima? Or better to be alive but deal with radiation sickness? Real fun playground talk like that.

These were the topics of debate on the minds of Cold War kids in the 1980s. I think we’ve collectively forgotten that feeling. That fear. I grew up in a town with a big military base and a National Laboratory. I grew up in a state that in the 1990s often showed up in various ways in the stories told on the X-Files television show.

Both of my parents held security clearances, so it wasn’t unusual to walk home from school and see government men in dark suits (so called “G-men”) who were interviewing our neighbors because one or the other of their security clearances was up for renewal. And we answered the door for the G-men because our neighbors worked at the Lab too.

It’s always been strange to me when people think what my dad did or that time in history was cool. It was never cool to me. My dad was obsessed with this stuff and would torment us kids for hours and hours telling the stories. Over and over. It was exhausting.

He’d talk about being out there on the island, and it was time for a test and he put his hands over his eyes and the light from the explosion was so bright he could see the bones in his hand. I always thought that was probably a bunch of bullshit, but over the years I’ve talked to others who were there and they said the same.

He’d talk about weapons and telemetry and words I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He’d talk even when I didn’t want to hear. He would tell the stories and go on and on and on.

Then for many years, there was a whole lot of backlash about the development of nuclear weapons. For a long time, I didn’t tell people what my dad did for a living because more than one person had given me a long lecture about why what he did was bad and how I should be ashamed.

I was never ashamed. I was just tired of his obsession and being forced to listen to his stories again and again. Those photos of mushroom clouds and everything that went with the continuing development of Oppenheimer’s deadly toy were forced on me, an unwelcome part of my childhood, and now it seems I can’t escape it even well into my adulthood.

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My father was diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis in 2002. He was given three to five years to live. It took a while for him to reconcile himself to this diagnosis and with time, we came to understand that the irreparable scarring in his lungs was most likely due to the inhalation of beryllium.

Which is to say, it was a side effect of the work he had done for all of those years.

He had also been exposed to a whole lot of radiation, back when they didn’t always know what all of those bombs and all of that radiation would do.He had absorbed so much that my mom said she counted fingers and toes when each of her kids were born because she just wasn’t sure how we’d turn out.

Given all the radiation, one might think that it would be cancer finding its way to my father. In some ways, the pulmonary fibrosis was worse. The ever-lessening lung function took his oxygen and his ability to tell long-winded stories. It robbed him of his voice. The voice used to torment and bore and prattle on for decades. The disease forced him to go silent in order to breathe.

What a strange and cruel irony.

I remember one hospital stay when we’d thought it was the end of his life, but he rallied. When he was sitting up in bed and recovering, I asked him if he wanted us to file a claim along with a group of people who were seeking compensation for their beryllium exposure from doing the same kind of work he had done.

While the United States government would never admit fault, they would admit that maybe there had not been enough safety measures in place over the years. Beryllium is one of the more nasty elements on the periodic table.

My dad said no, he didn’t want us to file. He was proud of the work he did and he accepted the consequences. He said he was proud to have served his country both in the military and with the National Laboratories.

His illness was a price he was willing to pay.

—

It’s a little odd and dislocating to see the word Oppenheimer as a trending topic on Twitter. To hear younger people talking excitedly about going to see the movie and learning about the odd little man who created something so immense and awful.

What was so nerdy and goofy and embarrassing about my dad is suddenly… cool? I did not see that one coming.

I recently heard that there is a waiting list of people who want to go tour the Trinity Site when it opens again in October (it’s only open twice a year in April and October).

My dad used to lead tours at the Trinity Site. He could go and tell all of his old stories to groups of people who hadn’t heard them before.

In retirement, he also was a docent for the National Atomic Museum which is now called the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. I always felt a little sorry for those school kids who went to visit the museum on a field trip and got my dad to lead their tour. Oh god, those poor kids had to listen to him drone on. He loved every minute of it.

I’ve had a few people ask me if I am going to go see the Oppenheimer movie and I usually say no with a quick vigor that raises an eyebrow. If I know the person well enough, I’ll explain that it would be like sitting through three hours of all those stories my dad tortured me and my siblings with throughout our childhoods. If I don’t know the person that well, I’ll just demur and say I think the movie is a little too long and I might catch it on streaming.

The truth is, I am not sure that I want to see it. You see, that story doesn’t hold the mythic sway for me that it might hold for others.

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I asked my mom, now nearing the age of 89, if she was going to see the movie. She was a lot closer to all of the action than I ever was. She said that she had hoped to see some of the old buildings in Los Alamos in the movie, but once she heard they’d built a set and didn’t film in the actual buildings, she was less interested too.

She told me how she remembered back in the 1940s and hearing about the test at the Trinity Site. Then later how scared she was when the atomic bomb was used in Japan. She would lay awake at night in terror for what it meant for the fate of the world.She said how awful it was that the atomic bomb was used. And how awful World War II had been before the atomic bomb was used. It was all just awful.

Once in the 1980s when I was feeling my teenage oats I asked my mom how she could possibly work at a place that made nuclear weapons. Her reply is something I have remembered for many years. She told me that she didn’t like nuclear weapons either, but other countries had them. Countries that were not friendly to the US. She was able to reconcile it in her mind because, she said, the US needed to be able to defend itself.

I think about what she said quite often. I can both agree and disagree if I think about it long enough.

—

For months it seems that all I see are either photos of bubblegum pink Margot Robbie or black and white emaciated Cillian Murphy.The amount of money spent on PR for these films must be staggering.

I suppose it has paid off, both broke box office records on their opening weekend and spawned a thousand think pieces. Exploration of the history of both a plastic doll and nuclear war. Both are valid, I think. Both have meaning.

Neither is on my list of movies to see.**

I see promotional photos of the actor Josh Hartnett who plays Ernest O. Lawrence in the film. Lawrence was another important figure in the development of nuclear weapons.

Here’s a fun fact: my grandmother grew up in South Dakota and her brothers were in the same class and friends with Ernest Lawrence. My dad used to ask her a thousand questions about what she remembered about the man she called “Ernie.”

So I guess this story, my American tale of a Nuclear Family, began early, back when the key players were just kids and the Great Depression hadn’t even happened.

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My father passed away in 2005 and I think if he had been alive today he would have wanted to see the Oppenheimer movie, but he would have scoffed at all the ways they got the story wrong, I’m sure.

I’m kind of sad that my enormous nerd of a dad didn’t get his moment in the zeitgeist. He didn’t get to see his lifelong obsession at the center of public discourse, if only for a little while.

I’m sure soon enough, as public interest moves along in Internet time, something new will emerge and the recent interest in Oppenheimer and his work will again wane.

I’ve long thought about writing about my dad and his history, I just honestly never thought anyone would care. Right now, for a little moment in time, my strange, awkward, atomic-obsessed dad and all of those mushroom cloud photos in our family archives are actually at the very height of trendy.

And no one is more surprised than me.

A black and white photo, a man kneels down to touch the ground and the earth is cracked and dry. The sun is in front of the man rendering him in silhouette. His shadow is long and stretches out toward the front of the photo. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos that is titled only “Tonopah” in my mom’s handwriting, meaning the Nevada Test Site. The silhouette sort of looks like my dad, but probably isn’t. I am pretty sure the person is inspecting the glass left after a nuclear explosion melts sand.

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Footnotes

*While not quite what this story is about, I did ask my dad more than once about Area 51. I’d asked him what he knew, what he saw. I wanted the inside scoop on the whole alien myth. My dad held a significant security clearance for all of his career and in response to my questions, he pointedly told me that there was nothing he could say.

I’ll never know if he knew anything about Area 51. I suspect not. But then again……

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**Though once upon a time I was entirely all about my Barbie Dream House with the working elevator.

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This post was originally published on Medium and more of my work can be found over there @karenfayeth.

Do I Smell Toast?

Posted on July 1, 2019
by Karen Fayeth
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On Friday morning I had what could best be referred to as one of them déjà vu kinda deals. Wikipedia says that’s “the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before.” Close enough, let’s go with it.

I ended the stressful workweek with a fairly intense morning meeting. It was a good meeting, but it was intense. When it was done, mentally beat up and a little worse for the wear, I left the building to walk to my car to move on to the next part of the workday.

Whether the heat, the quality of light, the alignment of clouds in the sky, a smell, or something entirely more woo-woo, as I walked to my car I had this overwhelming desire to lay down on the warm concrete sidewalk, just like I used to do when I was a kid. Follow with me here.

Growing up, I loved to go swimming at a public pool that was less than a mile from the house. Very walkable across a lovely green park and over to the pool. Once there I took to the water like it was my second home. Splashing around, spinning into summersaults, trying to see how long I could stay under, doing handstands, all of it. I’d stay in there for hours then when it was time to take a break, I’d breach the surface like a sea lion and flop onto the sun warmed concrete. Teeth chattering, I’d lay with my body straight out with arms tucked underneath.

The hot concrete warmed up my skin while the New Mexico sun baked the other side of me toasty brown.

There was a certain smell, the hot wet concrete and chlorine mixing with the cut grass smell from the park just over the fence. So much better, even, than laying in a pile of towels fresh out of the dryer, and that is pretty damn good.

This past Friday, I didn’t just think about this memory, I actively wanted to live it again by laying down and hugging the concrete. I had to use the grown-up voice inside of me to say, “don’t you do it or so help me…”

That feeling didn’t go away for a long while, long past when I’d climbed into my car and drove off, landing back at the office and back at work. The feeling still resonated with me and throughout the day, I had such a yearning, an overwhelming need to feel that feeling again.

Later, after work, over a glass of something lovely and chilled and delicious, I pondered why exactly I had such a strong memory and overwhelming desire to lay on warm pavement.

Was it nostalgia for the simple summers of childhood? Easy days not spent inside negotiating with recalcitrant suppliers. Days where could idle by the pool.

Was it the sense of warming comfort I’d get from hugging the concrete? A deep satisfying down to the bones warmth, like a comforting hug from the sun.

Was it simply a synaptic misfire in an already overwrought brain? Do I smell toast? Hell, I really don’t know.

Even as I write this a few days later, I can still feel that yearning somewhere inside. I don’t really need to do anything to remedy this, like go seek out a swimming pool and hot concrete. I just know that this out of nowhere memory stays really strong with me. A feeling of having lived through it and a desire to feel that again.

To compensate, I spent much of the past weekend out on the back deck soaking up a little California summer sun, but not so much that my fair skin burned. I sat out there watching the world go by and pondered my own life enough that I’m now tired of thinking about it.

I do still wonder, though, where the hell that memory came from. And why.

Then again, maybe thinking about it too much takes away the magic off the memory. A good reminder to myself to just, you know, let it be.

And oldie but a goodie from my Flickr archives, the swimming pool at Filoli Gardens

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Dark Days, Bright Ahead

Posted on January 4, 2019
by Karen Fayeth
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The holidays are over. Tinsel and paper all swept up and gone. Yesterday the trash men hauled away bones of the Christmas ham.

And Monday, I go back to work. Rather, I drag myself reluctantly back to work.

Here in the heart of winter, there are cold days ahead. And rain. And grim skies to match my grim demeanor.

What’s this, then?

A tiny blob of bright pink in my yard that I noticed today when returning from the grocery store, where candy canes and festive platters have given way to “healthy selections” and Valentine hearts.

I stepped closer, peered in between the branches to discover…

A single cherry blossom. Ahead of its time, but ready to be kissed by today’s warm California sun. Soon the rest of the tree will follow suit. Soon. But not yet.

And what is that over there?

A little cocoon, snug in a fur coat, warding off the shiver. A magnolia blossom, in very early stages. What is gray and fuzzy now will soon be creamy pink, fragrant and bold, seemingly overnight. Soon. But not yet.

Oh, and look at that!

In that one corner of the yard, I’d forgotten the daffodils that grow wild. Their leaves have come on bold and green with the promise of emerging stalks soon carrying butter yellow blooms. Soon. But not yet.

I stop and smile. I remember that December 21st was the shortest day of the year, a milestone that now lies in the past. Even though this weekend promises torrential rain (which the California soil will gladly drink up), gray skies, and gloom, the fact of the matter is that Spring is on its way with rush of color and fresh leaves, activity, joy and warmth.

The sunshine of my favorite season will soon come to push back the gloom and cobwebs in my mind and replace it with tulips and lilacs and California poppies.

I will photograph and paint and pick and sniff all of the riotous wildflowers that California has to offer. I will smile when I see them growing in the unlikeliest of places.

Oh so very soon I will bask in the Spring warmth and smile at the clear skies and feel happy as the sun sets later and later each day.

Soon. But not yet.

Top Ten Things I Love About Christmas In The Bay Area

Posted on December 22, 2018
by Karen Fayeth
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A few days ago I posted the refreshed for 2018 Top Ten Things I Miss About Christmas In New Mexico, which has become something of an annual nostalgia trip for me.

As I was writing it, I thought to myself, you know….I’ve lived in the Bay Area for twenty years. Maybe it’s time to write a top ten for my current home.

I mean, I am an ex-pat New Mexican and will always be a New Mexican, but I’ve lived in the Bay Area long enough to also call it home. I guess I’m lucky in that way, to call more than one place my home.

And so without further ado:

Top Ten Things I Love About Christmas In The Bay Area

1) San Francisco’s buildings lit up like presents. Around Thanksgiving the buildings on and near the Embarcadero turn into glittering holiday presents and the Ferry Building lights up red and green.

My first Christmas living here, I’d taken a ferry over to Sausalito to buy presents. When I came back over on the ferry, just as the sun was setting, I saw those gift-wrapped buildings for the first time I couldn’t stop staring. It’s so beautiful and an annual tradition.

This was taken just after New Year’s Eve fireworks last year, hence the smoke, but the view can’t be beat. Image found here

2) And while we’re talking about things down on the Embarcadero, how about the tradition of Palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights? Other than one sickly Palm tree doing its best to grow by the NMSU library, there aren’t really a lot of Palm trees in New Mexico.

But there are plenty here and I love that they get in on the holiday fun. The Bay Area is hardly the only place to feature lit up holiday Palm trees, but it is the first place I ever saw the style and I’ve always loved it.

Here’s an example of the Palm trees outside of AT&T park (there are 24 Palm trees to honor legendary #24, Willie Mays).

Image by Fuzzy Traveler and found on Flickr.

3) To stay on the theme of trees, the Bay Area hosts and awful lot of offbeat Christmas trees each year. I don’t recall seeing a lot of weird trees back home in New Mexico, mostly normal trees decorated in the traditional way (which I love). But since living here in the Bay Area, I’ve seen a variety of trees including one decorated with only the heads ripped from dolls (weird), a tree decked out solely in Star Trek gear (nerdy), trees made of alternative materials like lab supplies, computer servers and routers, and then this one found at an architecture firm by internet friend, UPS driver extraordinaire, and longtime San Franciscan, Rafael Monterrosa.

Photo copyright Rafael Monterrosa (@rafael415 on Instagram), and used with permission. Give Rafael a follow, he is a fantastic photographer and posts photos from his travels all around the city of San Francisco. He’s got a sharp photographic eye and knowledge of the City like no one else.

4) Okay, one last tree thing: Another fine Bay Area holiday tradition is tree lighting ceremonies. Usually happenig the weekend after Thanksgiving, every town has at least one. From the Union Square and Ghirardelli Square events in San Francisco, to Jack London Square in Oakland, to Christmas in the Park in San Jose, and lots of smaller neighborhoods and businesses in between, people love to come out to see trees light up for the first time of the season, drink hot chocolate, and get into the holiday mood.

Here’s a photo from my little neighborhood’s second annual tree lighting event this year:

5) Now it’s time to move on to the fantastic Bay Area food traditions at the holidays. Let’s talk about Lumpia which can be found at just about every holiday potluck. Living in the Bay Area has opened me up to the traditions of so many cultures that I just never experienced back home in New Mexico.

I have been honored to know and work with so many amazing people from the Philippines, and they have lovingly introduced me to their food, most notably lumpia, which can roughly be described as a Philippino egg roll. More colloquially it’s been called the food equivalent of crack, and I can’t disagree.
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Nothing more joyful than a huge pile of lumpia at the holiday party. No matter how many are in the pile, they will certainly ALL be gone within no time, and I will do my part to make them disappear. So freaking good.

6) Let’s keep talking about holiday pot lucks because the Bay Area likes to eat, something I have always loved that about living here. In addition to lumpia, holiday eating in the Bay is an enormous cross section of diverse foods, all of them delicious.

This year my loaded down holiday plate included lumpia, pork buns, chow mein noodles, Italian seafood lasagna, samosas (delicious little savory pockets from Indian culture), German stollen, Hungarian floating island dessert, pecan pie (hello pecan producers in NM!), enchiladas, guacamole, ceviche (done in a Brazilian style), and much more.

I mean, come on! The amazing diversity of the Bay Area means the best of foods from around the world. What’s not to love?

7) I’m not done talking about food either. Holiday season is also Dungeness crab season. Starting roughly in November (start dates depend on a lot of things), this is the time of year where the commercial crab season opens, and oh what a season.

For many Bay Area families, it’s tradition to go down to the wharf or to certain places at the coast on Christmas morning to buy crab. Fresh caught that morning, and you can take it home and cook it yourself, or pick one out from the steaming vats.

As a single gal, I used to celebrate holidays with a dear friend, and she loved this tradition. She’d go out early in the morning to buy crab then put a huge stock pot in the middle of her dining room table to catch the shells and we’d dive in with hands and metal crab crackers. Some folks think eating crab is too much work, I say those people leave more crab for me and that’s just fine. Delicious!

8) Going to the beach on Christmas day. One of the best Christmases I ever had was when I was all alone, a little depressed, and I made the excellent decision to pack up some leftover Chinese food, a blanket and a small radio and head to the beaches of Half Moon Bay for the day. It was a balmy 65 degrees and for many hours I had the beach all to myself. I read, I ate, I zoned out, I watched the waves, and I wasn’t lonely for a minute.

9) The smell of eucalyptus and fog. Okay, fair enough, this is not just a holiday thing, but for some reason it stands out for me during the holiday season. The Bay Area is home to quite a few Eucalyptus trees, which are actually an invasive species, but are now just a part of life here.

The Bay Area geography means we have what is called a “marine layer“, which is the reason for the iconic fog we experience. Roughly explained, when a warm Bay Area day meets the cool, cool Pacific Ocean, they crash into each other and create fog.

Add to that when a Eucalyptus tree gets warmed up, it releases its very aromatic oils.

So you have a warm tree giving off oils and by the afternoon a marine layer pushing ocean fog into the Bay Area. This creates a smell that is unique to the Bay Area all year round. Add in the moist damp air from the rainy season that starts around the holidays and you have something that will forever be etched in my mind. Even my sister recently commented on her memory of the Eucalyptus smell from her last visit.

10) To use a colloquialism from the internet, I truly love the way the Bay Area is so very extra at the holidays. Examples include the enormous real Gingerbread House at the Fairmont hotel, the entire Oakland Zoo covered in holiday lights, the huge Dickens fair, the full size skating rink constructed every year at the Embarcadero Plaza, real live reindeer at the Discovery Museum, the lighted boat parade with holiday lights from San Francisco’s not one but two yacht clubs, and that’s not even the beginning of a comprehensive list. There is always something to do, to try, to remember, and to make a tradition.

The Bay Area loves the holidays and I love everything about that.

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Well that ended up being an awful lot of fun to write. Maybe posting this version right after my New Mexico version becomes my new holiday tradition.

Basically, I just love the holidays and all the food, smells, and trees, so I guess wherever in the world I live, I’ll find something to love and write about at the holidays.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey. Feel free to tell me what you love best about the holidays where you live either here or on any of the social media where we connect.

And to you and yours, wherever in the world you are, wishing a wonderful, joyful, and magic holiday season.

I Don’t Want To Be Right. Okay, Maybe I Do.

Posted on December 29, 2016December 29, 2016
by Karen Fayeth
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In my quest to 1) become a better person and 2) survive 2016 intact, several weeks ago I signed up for a mindfulness meditation class.

The instructor is lovely and the class is, well, relaxing. It makes me calmer and a better person in so many ways.

This whole meditation thing doesn’t really jibe with my New Mexico upbringing. Stress reduction is a bit different ’round here than it was there.

For example, where I live now, it’s awful hard to take a three-hour ride upon my favorite horse in order to relax. And driving out to Chopes for enchiladas and a beer is a longer drive than I can make in a day.

Meditation it is, then.

Last week, we had a long class discussion about the use of one’s car horn. How it’s not mindful or necessary to lay on the horn while traveling this world. How it can make things worse by scaring the other driver or making the other driver mad (and bad things come from that).

This is also in line with The Good Man and his rules for better living. Since we live in a more urban city than I’ve ever lived in before, he has asked me nicely give my horn honking a rest. These are tense times and occasionally I travel through tough neighborhoods. Who knows how the ol’ toot-toot will be received?

Really, this is all sage advice, both from the Vispassana teacher and the man I married.

Until yesterday, when I found myself in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood. Where the Chinatown in San Francisco is something of a tourist delight, the Oakland Chinatown is a serious ethnic neighborhood. It sits near Oakland’s downtown, so it’s busy, jam packed with traffic, and not to be taken lightly.

I’ve spent many an hour in Oakland’s Chinatown over my years and I love it. It had been a while, and was nice to be there again. I had a couple things on my shopping list that can only be found in that neighborhood.

As I rolled into the area, I made my way past city buses and double-parked cars, and was filled with glee to find a nice wide parking spot on the street just around the corner from where I needed to be. Score!

I carefully maneuvered over, waited while the car ahead loaded her kid in the car, had my blinker on the whole time and as I pulled forward to align and began to back into the spot, some $%^& started to pull head first into my spot.

Yay, verily, there was much laying on of horns. Oh yes. My beloved Jeep is equipped with not one but two bassy air horns that make it clear to whomever is on the receiving end that they have been properly honked. One firm flat-palm press lights up the hearing cavities of all nearby.

I held that Jeep horn with a solid hand, owing my destiny to all of the fabulous people throughout my years here in the Bay Area who taught me how to survive in a city. Indeed. I followed the playbook and hoped to hell this wouldn’t escalate into that driver getting out of their car.

Thus, as the interloper assessed the situation, she surely noticed my sixteen-year-old Jeep was far less shiny than her almost new SUV nosing into my spot. I held steady, knowing even then that the person backing in is at a disadvantage to the person trying to head in.

Finally the fancy car threw it in reverse and left, giving me an exaggerated shrug on the way by.

Here is the true confession: Damn did honking the hell out of my horn feel good. Like, real good. Like cold beer after a hard day of yard work. Like that first bite of a Chopes enchilada (egg and sour cream on top). Like finally getting out the splinter that is starting to fester.

I know it goes against everything my spouse and my learned teacher have asked of me. It wasn’t peaceful, nor kind. But damn did it feel good.

Almost too good.

Okay, okay. The horn honking is over. The satisfaction was quick and delicious. The endorphins rose and quickly dissipated.

Today I’ll rededicate myself to the peaceful life. To being more kind. To being more centered. To let traffic solve itself without the help of two weighty and meaningful Jeep air horns.

They don’t call meditation a practice for nothing. It takes work. Perfection is not expected. (I’ll add this note, I refrained from both cursing and arm waving in addition to the horn. It’s something to build on.)

Given the same situation, would I honk it up again? Hee, hee…probably.

Okay, okay. I’ll try harder.

Ooooohmmmmmmmmmmmmm……

Recycling one of my favorite photos.

Image found here.