The Windows of New York

I haven't had time lately to look for my late father in books, particularly ones about New York City or set in New York City. New biographies about Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, James Beard and Jimmy Carter horn in, as well as the first volume of the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., and John O. Brennan's memoir about his career in the CIA. I have to get to the Eleanor Roosevelt biography first because there's only one copy in my local library system and two people have it on hold after me, but she is New York, so maybe I'll see him a little bit there.

For now, while I wait for those thousands of pages to clear, YouTube is useful. I look up the New York City walking tours, Midtown Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, 8th Avenue, and I seek him not only in the faces that pass by the camera, but the windows of New York in the skyscrapers, in the shorter buildings. I wonder who's in the office buildings, the hotel rooms, who's behind the windows next to the fire escapes in those very moments. Do they have the same energy my father had for the city? I know it's changed drastically since he was born in the Bronx and then lived nearby enough in Paramus, New Jersey, and also taught in New York City in the '70s, always noting the rats in the schools. Do those people have the same single-minded passion for their work that he had for his career? Do they have the same charismatic welcome that he had for other people?

PBS has those Live from Lincoln Center concerts with such luminaries as Patina Miller, James Naughton (who I will always remember as the Gentleman Caller in Paul Newman's adaptation of The Glass Menagerie with John Malkovich, Joanne Woodward, and Karen Allen), and Megan Hilty, these ones recorded in the Allen Room of Frederick P. Rose Hall at Lincoln Center, the windows of which look out on Central Park and Columbus Circle. I watch the performers here and there, but whenever the camera angle is large enough, I look out those windows at the traffic barreling down the streets, and I wonder how often my father drove those streets. You would never have caught him on public transportation like my mother had done when she grew up in White Plains, New York. She always said to my father that he never knew a true New York winter. He never had to ride the bus. He never had to walk in the snow.

I'm sure many of those drivers are as impatient as my father was, but it's because of his experiences driving in New York that he was able to navigate anywhere else in the world. We always joked that you could drop him in a paper bag, take him out to the middle of nowhere in, say, Kansas or Iowa, and he would be able to find his way around without hesitation. That was his gift. When we were first tourists in Las Vegas in 2007, and had never seen the city before in our lives, he knew where to go. I have that ability, but only locally. I can get you through Ventura, but not via the freeway (which is more a leisurely three-lane highway, and much more manageable than the six lanes of Los Angeles), since I never see it as a driver.

I know that in my search for him, my father would also want me to find what interests me about New York City. I think if the day ever came, I could visit it, but not in winter. I'm not trained for that, and never lived in such a climate, having been born and raised in Florida, spending all of my life in the bottom half of the United States, including Nevada, and now California again. But I love parks, and I've always been curious about Central Park. Ditto Lincoln Center itself, including the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts there, which has a wealth of theater performances on film and tape. For that alone, if ever given the chance, I don't think I'd ever leave that library.

So for me, YouTube is also a window onto Central Park and Lincoln Center. Watching the walking tours of Central Park, I wonder how often my father was there. He was most certainly talkative about the Bronx (he was born there and revered it his entire life), but I never thought to ask him about all those other parts of New York City he knew. He seemed to be so thoroughly of the Bronx, even given the brief period he actually lived there (I think he and his family moved from there to New Jersey when he was 7), that maybe it would have seemed strange to take him away from the Bronx, however briefly, even in questions.

Last Thursday, I started reading John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson, in honor of my old friend at the Ojai Library, the aging, slightly waterlogged copy that I found out was weeded from the collection there. This copy, purchased through AbeBooks, came from the Butte County Library in Chico, a discarded copy. I've always been curious about Steinbeck anyway ever since visiting the Steinbeck house in Salinas in 2006, but as I read the biography, looking forward to reading about the process of writing The Grapes of Wrath, I slowed down. I read about his years at Stanford University, his caretaker job at Lake Tahoe, and it became clear to me: I don't think I can be an out-and-out Californian. I like living in Ventura, I love the weather, which is incredibly convenient, but I don't have that overall appreciation of vast spaces and rugged independence. In the moment, sure, but not something I think about often.

This realization came to me because on page 138, with Steinbeck still in Tahoe, I thought about John Cheever. I've always felt closer to John Cheever. I saw Frank Perry's adaptation of his short story The Swimmer on Turner Classic Movies once when I was a senior in high school in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and I was completely stunned by it, devastated by the ending. When I was a student at College of the Canyons in Valencia, California, I found a volume of Cheever's short stories and finally read The Swimmer, as well as his other short stories and then moved on to The Wapshot Chronicle and Falconer.

I'm a Florida native, Southerner by birth, but not by blood, as I often define it. But I have New York City, and by extension, the east coast, from my parents. It's there forever. It's why I could never become a true Californian, but it's not an everlasting conflict within me. Parts of California have interested me, but never the whole thing at the same time. The north's perception of the south, for example, and vice versa. That interests me. But the overall life? The overall feel? No. I've always felt close to Cheever and his examination of the slow, conflicted, hidden simmer of east coast bedroom communities. Closer, historically, than I've been able to find for myself in California. Its history interests me, and I study parts of it, but to step inside is difficult for me. My history is east coast, even though it's likely I'll never see it extensively again, and I have no desire to visit Florida. We moved around so much that I never really felt I had roots there. So it doesn't matter as much.

Besides the East Coast connection I also feel closer to Cheever because in 2008, I wrote an essay about The Swimmer for an anthology by the Online Film Critics Society (of which I was a member) that ultimately never happened. I reread The Swimmer as partial research for the essay. I may post it here sometime, but I believe that experience is what hooked me on Cheever, and defined more my place in the world, where I am in relation to where I'm living. After discovering that while reading up to that point in the Steinbeck biography (I'll go back to it after I finish reading those new biographies), I put Blake Bailey's biography of Cheever on hold at my local library, as well as the Library of America volume containing all of Cheever's short stories, to rediscover them, being significantly older now, 12 years after writing that essay. I have spent a great deal of my life moreso in living spaces and the routines involved than anything else, so perhaps that's why I also connect to Cheever, that middle-class aspect. And Cheever lived in New York, too, just like my parents. Steinbeck has a place in my reading life, of course, but Cheever has a bigger place. It's in my genes.

Right now, I'm watching a YouTube video of a walking tour of the Upper West Side in Manhattan, "Columbus Circle & Lincoln Center," as the title notes. The first shot looks way up at the skyscrapers at the intersection of 9th Avenue and West 59th Street, and I wonder how often my father saw those buildings, if he was ever in awe of them or if they were just a normal part of his life, not something you really look at when you live in that environment every day. Then the walking tour begins, with another quick pan-up at the buildings, and then back to the sidewalk.This is the one video, the browns and grays of the buildings, and the windows alongside, that makes me wonder what I might have been like if I had been a New Yorker, too, if neither of my parents had moved out of the region. Would I have even cared to notice any of this? I wonder if my personality would have become more jagged, or more expansive, perhaps. The buildings, the windows, still fascinate me, though.

YouTube also has the full 2017 Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS. Before this year of no usual Thanksgiving Day Parade, the CBS broadcast was always my favorite. And I'll probably watch this one again in the next few weeks because the sole focus of the NBC one was the Broadway performances in front of Macy's and the parade itself in tight shots. Never the atmosphere of New York City, or at least one part. In the CBS broadcast, they're on a platform way up, across from the Hilton Midtown hotel, and there's a greater stretch of buildings behind them. It feels more naturally New York, the crowd less processed than it feels on NBC.

Still the windows and the wonder. Is my father somewhere in the New York City of today? Or is he in the books of the past? I'll keep watching, and I'll keep reading. I know he's with me, but I want that context, too.

The Honey Roasted Peanut Guide to Sesame Sticks

It started at Dollar Tree.

A month, or two months, or three years ago (these last five years have been so very long this year), my sister and I were across the street from it at the FedEx store for her to turn her recent birthday present printed on regular paper---creamy shots of the ocean, likely here in Ventura, about to charge onto the sand---into a bigger collage on glossier paper, pulled from a .jpg on the flash drive she brought with her for the guy at the counter to do it.

She had first seen the shots at the Latitude Gallery in downtown Ventura, but the price for a framed print would have only been acceptable if we could have climbed inside of it to live in it, in lieu of rent. 

So that was the best way for our budget. And after it was arranged, price paid, receipt given along with when to come back to pick it up, we thought about where else to go. Nothing in the current shopping center. No notepads needed at Office Depot, no lamps at Lamps Plus.

But there, across this stretch of Telephone Road, was WinCo and Dollar Tree, among other places. I, at least, hadn't been to Dollar Tree in many months. It has a far better selection of books than 99 Cents Only ever will, much as it occasionally valiantly tries (I have four promising ones from 99 scattered around, including "The Leisure Seeker," which became a movie starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland). That was reason enough for me to stop into Dollar Tree.

We crossed the street, walking past the side of Blaze Pizza, Dollar Tree straight ahead. And in we went for me to see what books I could salivate over.

But surprisingly, this is not about books. This is about what happened after I picked out three books from the stacks that are such a joy for me to browse, and then to worry over when I think I've picked too many. As an insatiable reader, there's no such thing as too many, except when living in an apartment with limited space, and the front parts of the shelves of my bookcases also stacked with books, besides the standard usage of bookcases.

No, this is about hunger, temporarily satisfied until it started again five minutes later.

I was hungry. Arby's was nearby (I like their sandwiches), but I didn't feel like Arby's. Besides, this was a short outing. We'd be home soon.

I couldn't ignore it, though. I needed at least a little something. And I went to the aisle that has packaged nuts, to see what they offered versus what I pick up often at 99 Cents Only from the Dan-D-Pak brand, mostly almonds and walnuts.

I spotted a brand called Snak King, which offered a honey roasted mix that appealed to me because it included almonds, but I was curious about the sesame sticks in it. My late father really liked sesame sticks, and so I thought I should try this pack for that, in tribute to him. I ended up buying three because it had been a while since I had had this pack, and what if I liked it and was left with nothing till the next time that my Dollar Tree book craving hit? Besides, I am always in full support of anything honey roasted.

We left Dollar Tree to walk to WinCo, to see about one or two things my mother wanted to know if they had. I vaguely recall something about cotton squares, but more memorable were the Campfire Marshmallows I wanted to get her as she likes them, usually above what we sometimes get from Ralphs, though far below the seasonal marshmallows that Trader Joe's sells.

I tore open one of the packs and dug in, looking for the sesame sticks, honey roasted also. I found them, reliably coated with sugar, as many producers of honey roasted nuts tend to do, and I tried one.

And I stopped dead in my walk. 

More than sesame sticks, my father loved halvah, which is usually a bar made of tahini (ground sesame seeds), with sugar, chocolate, or other flavors. When we lived in Santa Clarita, close enough to Los Angeles to visit the Fairfax District every now and then, he was on the hunt for that in the Israeli supermarkets. I liked it well enough, but I never latched onto it like he did. I love marzipan more, really love it, in the same way he loved halvah.

But these sesame sticks. I had had my share in years' past, but I never paid much attention to it. This was a different dimension. It wasn't the honey roasted aspect that did it, but the overall flavor which commanded attention, which told you to really think about the taste, what constituted it, where it came from. 

It's salty, yes, but an in-depth saltiness. This is not the saltiness of Lays that you just simply shovel in because they taste good, and the more you eat, the more you get to keep that flavor in your mouth. This is a flavor that asks you to go piece by piece, to really consider it.

The sesame seeds are an important part of it, obviously. But what really makes it is what I didn't realize at first was the main attraction for me: Malted barley flour. Malted is the keyword, because I love chocolate, strawberry, whatever malts, and malted vinegar, thanks to when John Boston, one of my old, deeply respected bosses, came to visit me here in Ventura and we went to a fish place down South Seaward Avenue, near the best stretch of beach in all of Ventura. It closed since then and is now Pierpont Tacos, but I remember his preference for malt vinegar, and I was curious, too, because it was malt. This also went back to the time at The Signal newspaper that I wanted to be like him as a writer, as a person, and I got into Tootsie Roll Pops for that reason, and even subscribed to the New Yorker for a time because he read it. 

Naturally, the more of something you want, the less there is (except for books, thankfully). And that was the case with these honey roasted sesame sticks. One pack was enough, and I'd save the other two for another time. But I wanted that flavor again. I wanted to think about it again for a while. I wanted the center it seemed to bring, time and space that usually feeds into the obsessive search for knowledge, into more books.

It had triggered in me another kind of search, too. Even after having the last two packs later on, I knew I couldn't keep buying that honey roasted snack mix from Dollar Tree just for the sesame sticks. Not with the book section always beckoning. I needed to find other sesame sticks that offered exactly what those sesame sticks inspired in me.

It began early last month. We were shopping at Ralphs and in their natural nut section was a container of sesame sticks. $3.99. A price I normally blanch at, for anything. Mostly in between jobs (though I still work part-time at Ventura College, and I'm thankful for that), trying to gain a solid connection in Ventura, I try to spend as little money as possible. There are necessities, groceries and such, but I've vowed to live as small as I possibly can. Even when I do land something full-time, I'll do the same. It's good training, because it's not worth the consumerist hassle. A local library is always a godsend.

However, I also judge $3.99 by how far we can stretch it. Honey vanilla almond milk at least lasts for a while longer than regular milk. And I wasn't going to eat this container of sesame sticks all at once, so it would at least stretch for a few weeks. $3.99 wasn't so risky here.

With Ralphs' offering, I learned that it's a matter of balance between the malted barley flour, bulgur wheat, and the sesame seeds. The honey roasted sesame sticks from Dollar Tree (through the Snak King brand), were on you right away, demanding that you notice, and I liked that. With the ones from Ralphs, you crunch a few times, and only toward the end do you get that weighty tinge of flavor. They were acceptable, they worked as sesame sticks, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

A couple Saturdays ago, while my sister was out with her boyfriend and they stopped at Big Lots, I asked her to look for sesame sticks for me, and she found the Good Sense brand that's ubiquitous in that aisle, Sesame Oat Bran Sticks. I'm nearly finished with the bag now and to me, it tastes too busy, possibly because of the oat bran. That thoughtful flavor doesn't come through prominently enough.

After that offering, I went on Amazon, scrolling through its pages of sesame sticks. $14.99 for 2 pounds of honey roasted sesame sticks from the Anna and Sarah brand. 3 pounds of smoky bacon maple honey roasted sesame sticks from SweetGourmet for $19.99. 2 pounds of  narrow, lightly salted sesame sticks for $14.11 from Yankee Trader. Heftier prices than the $3.99 from Ralphs, and riskier. What if I don't like Yankee Traders' sesame sticks and I'm stuck with 2 pounds? Choose one of them, and that's all I'll be choosing for a while with those prices. Still I look. Still I mull.

Last Sunday at 99 Cents Only, I was in the nut aisle, picking up my usual Dan-D-Pak bag of almonds (I've given up the walnuts for a while, tired of them), and noticed more formidable-looking packaging for Dan-D-Pak's honey roasted peanuts. "Signature Product" it said on the top right. I hadn't thought much about honey roasted peanuts then. The last time I'd had them was Walmart's brand, which always has too much sugar crystals stuck to every peanut. It's why I haven't gotten them in many months.

But I was curious about what made Dan-D-Pak so proud of these honey roasted peanuts to package them this way, and I put a bag in the cart. 

Not long after I got home, I tried them and was awestruck. Finally, there's a company that has made perfect honey roasted peanuts! No sugar sprinkled on them like other brands. No honey-sugary crust that completely ignores "peanut" in the name "honey roasted peanuts." The honey was there, both it and the peanut working gently in tandem. An impressive balance for a snack that isn't often known for that.

And I realized that that's what I'm looking for in sesame sticks, that kind of cooperation. I want that in-depth flavor, but I want it to be meaningful like that, that whoever makes it has clearly thought about what it should be and has undoubtedly tested different batches until they reached their ideal presentation. And these honey roasted peanuts were it, to the extent that every time I go to 99 Cents Only, I'm getting a bag of them. I'm also going to use them as the model for my ideal sesame sticks. I'm not ready yet, but I may take a gamble on one of sesame stick brands from Amazon. If I do, they're going to have a lot to live up to.

Double Concentrated Storytelling

My mother, my sister, and I live in an apartment complex that's directly behind Ralphs supermarket. Across the street from the Montalvo Square Shopping Center, which is basically our address, is Walmart directly ahead, and Trader Joe's to the far left side of that lot. I know all of them very well, as we go to Ralphs and Walmart for our basic necessities, and Trader Joe's when we're feeling adventurous once in a while. 

Vons, which is further down Victoria Avenue, and actually sits closer to Telephone Road (which intersects Victoria at the Government Center complex), is more expensive than it's worth, and it's really only for the occasional fill-in that we can't find anywhere else.

But I know Ralphs and Walmart all too well. In the times I don't go grocery shopping with my mother and my sister, my sister calls me from certain parts of the store, asking if I want this or that, and I know exactly where she is. It shows up clearly in my mind, right down to any display racks that might be nearby, such as in the bakery section. 

Both Ralphs and Walmart feed my interest of finding out where products are from, usually turning them over to read the company name and the city and state, especially Walmart because it feels like a more casual place to do it. I don't go up and down the aisles turning over every product, though, just those that catch my eye. I don't remember how it began, but it's been with me for years. Maybe I'm curious about what these cities and towns might look like, or maybe I just like their names. It may well be a combination of both. 

Neither Ralphs nor Walmart offers a sense of imagination, because I know all those products quite well. I don't buy them all, but I see them often enough. It's not their fault, though, that I'm well familiar with the names and styles of the publishing companies of word search puzzle magazines. Nor that I remain disappointed that Walmart still hosts the Jif vs. Skippy peanut butter battle, with no other peanut butter valiantly trying to fight for their space on the shelves. That's all there is in my Walmart. Nor that I lately walk the aisle of canned tomatoes at Ralphs, not finding the Hunt's low sodium diced tomatoes with Italian seasoning, the only canned kind I really like, and so I mourn. In these two stores, what mostly occupies my mind is what we need to get, and what else I might want that's right there. Both are the stores of day-to-day living. You get what you need swiftly enough because you have other things to do.

There is a contrast here in Ventura, one that I hope is true of other cities and towns. That contrast is the 99 Cents Only store, which retains its novelty by changing its stock far more often than Ralphs and Walmart tend to. 

It's hard not to notice that anyway, but it's even more acute when you lose something there that's important to you. Case in point was yesterday when we were at our local 99 Cents Only, also on Victoria, and I found that the shelves where peanut butter is had been rearranged to basically show that Peter Pan peanut butter, my absolute favorite, is not there anymore. It might be back the next time we go, but chances are, the way those shelves looked absolutely certain, I don't think there's a chance. Before we went to 99, I had one open on the counter to the right of the stove, and a spare on the larger counter to the left of the stove. The only thing I could think to do in that circumstance was put in the cart a jar of another peanut butter I'd seen many times, one made in British Columbia, Canada, just to try it after I finish my Peter Pan stash, and see if it's anything worthwhile.

99 Cents Only offers an expedition. You have to linger there. You can't treat it like your local supermarket, where you're in and then out as fast as you can. There are often unusual things here, or even miraculous things. For example, the last couple times we had pasta that we bought from Ralphs, I found the spaghetti---well, mostly spaghetti anyway---to be too starchy. Last night, my sister made a pasta bake with a brand we found at 99 Cents Only called Pastaio, which apparently comes from Italy, and might be from Sardinia, if the company's website is any indication. It was rotini, and it was the first pasta I'd had in so long that tasted like pasta should, not starchy at all. After all those times, I had forgotten pasta could be like this. It was miraculous to me.

Curiosity also blossoms in 99 Cents Only. The more time you spend in 99 Cents Only expands one's sense of wonder. A minor example from yesterday is when I found three stacks of DVDs on shelves near automotive stuff, and spotted a lone copy of <i>The Leisure Seeker</i> starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. I was amused because I had bought a copy of the novel it's based on from this exact 99 Cents Only a few months ago. And here was the movie. I bought it, of course, for whenever I can get to it, most likely after finally reading the novel, which is sitting on my nightstand. But I wondered about the journey of this one DVD to get to this 99 Cents Only. Who had negotiated such a deal? Who had determined that the movie wasn't likely to sell any more copies by traditional means? And how is it that there only ended up being one copy? Were there other 99s that received more than one? I wondered.

The real curiosity for me came early on in our shopping, in the same aisle on the same side as the Pastaio brand pasta. I spotted a longish box containing what looks like one of those old-time toothpaste tubes, with a small green twist cap, and it looks like you have to aim the tip of a sharp-enough knife just so to pierce the metal top. There's nothing to pull off from the covered top. That's your only choice.

The front of the box announced "De Rica Double Concentrated Organic Tomato Paste," also made in Italy. Immediately, I wondered what made it double concentrated, what the process to make it double concentrated is like, and wondered where in Italy it was made. Looking at the box right now and leaning on Google, I find that it's Cremona, Italy, in northern Italy, known for its violin-making heritage. 

Lately, I've been in a European mood. A couple weeks ago I spotted a novel on Amazon called <i>Scorpionfish</i> by Natalie Bakopoulos and wondered why I haven't read a lot about Greece, especially considering that I love Greek food (I put it on hold in the Ventura County Library system, and am just waiting for the person ahead of me to finish it). I looked at that box with the toothpaste tube of double concentrated tomato paste (we bought it, of course, because it's one of the many kinds of novelties to be found at 99 Cents Only, happening upon what you've never seen before), and wondered the same about Italy. I should read more books about Italy, novels and otherwise, since I'm fascinated with the culture there. And last night, I started reading <i>The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World</i> by Barry Gewen, Kissinger having escaped with his immediately family from Nazi Germany, but losing many relatives to concentration camps. My first reason for reading this book is because it's also governmental history, one of my passions, but Germany also interests me, namely because Peter Schilling, who sang my favorite song "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is German, and there's a kind of devotion to work I admire there, particularly because my mother and I discovered during the summer the Women's World word seek and crossword puzzle books, which are the best that we've had in so long. Both of them are published by Bauer Media Group, a German company.

Overall, this is what 99 Cents Only does. In your imagination, it takes you to places you either haven't been to in a long time or never been to yet. On one side of the store, to the left of the entrance, they're now selling flip flops, all hung up on the wall there. In another section of the store, in the cold case used to store fruits and vegetables, there were kiwi berries, which I've never had and might have been curious enough about to pick up a pack if I hadn't been spirited away by the discovery that Producers brand egg nog is there again, my favorite egg nog out of all that I've tried. They also have Rock View Pumpkin Nog, another favorite, but far less important than Producers, and as long as Producers is there, Rock View is dead to me. 

I don't mind that egg nog is there already, just like how I don't mind that there were Christmas-themed word puzzle books in the book aisle. With the year it's been, I don't mind seeing all that before Halloween. More cheer like that is crucial, and I bought a quart of that egg nog and two smaller bottles of it. This 99 Cents Only will be my beacon until the end of the holidays because of that.

For me, a library generally does what 99 Cents Only is doing for me right now. But all patrons can do at our local libraries in Ventura County is pick up holds at the entrance. No one else besides staff is allowed in there. And my beloved Ventura College Library is still closed, just like the rest of my beloved campus. When things get to a point where we can lead a quasi-normal life, and more places are opening regularly, the first place I'm going is the Ventura College Library. And I'm never leaving. I work for the college anyway. 

I know why libraries aren't open up fully again, and I respect that. Besides, from the way things are going, I feel like the Ventura County libraries may start cautiously opening back up in March, but not before. There's enough time for them to set out the policies necessary to open back up, along with planning for the contingencies that will undoubtedly arise from a restless public. That takes a lot of time and talent, and I've seen firsthand that they have the talent to do it.

But it's not the same looking up books on Amazon in order to fill out the "Tell Us What to Buy" form on the library website, or looking up books there, putting them on hold and waiting. This year has shown how important browsing the stacks is to my well-being, moreso in the college library. That kind of intellectual adventure keeps me whole. The books stay the same, but my interests shift, my priorities in reading change, and I go in each time looking for something different, but am always happy to bump into a different book at random. 

So 99 Cents Only is where it's at for me right now. And I'm sure it'll be more often over the next few months as long as Producers egg nog is there. I need a place to let my imagination fly, besides my reading, and this will do. Also to see what changes, to see what interesting items suddenly appear that I'd never expected to see in a 99 Cents Only store, to wonder, for example, how Vons products somehow ended up here, including the three-cheese pasta sauce we had last night.

And maybe it works out better this way. In my college library, I generally know what to expect already, even though there are shelves in the stacks I don't see every time. I do know that the Leisure Reading section changes here and there as books that have been there for a while are moved to the main stacks, and new books, fiction and nonfiction alike, come in to fill the gaps (although I'm not sure how it's going to be when the campus opens up to some degree again, because budgets are not going to be friendly at least over the next few years). But whatever drives me into the library, whatever topic I want to read about, I know where it all is. I know which way to go. I know what books I'll pass if I go this way or that way. It's a kind of security for me, stability, my foundation that keeps me upright. 

I do love that at 99 Cents Only, I absolutely do not know what to expect. I don't know what I'll see from one time to the next. Also yesterday, I found blackberries. No blueberries. Next time, it may well be blueberries, but no blackberries, which would have pleased my mother yesterday since she wanted blueberries. I know that all the aisles will retain their general shape, that certain products will always be in certain places. But how they change is what I'm after. Will I find Peter Pan peanut butter again? Or will it go by the wayside like those cans of Maxwell House cold brew coffee did? (Those were mistakenly priced at $0.99 each at the start, and I bought 6.)

Or maybe I discover something else to hold onto. 99 Cents Only is where I discovered Champion Raisins, which I like far better than Sun-Maid, mainly because in one small box, I found a piece of a branch inside, and it gave me a closer connection to the crop. I liked that, and the raisins are better anyway. The egg nog will be here for a few months and then it'll be gone again either right after Christmas or after the start of the new year. But right there, for a time, I have a big part of what I love during the holiday season. 

Obviously the main reason to visit 99 Cents Only is to save money, and I think even if I got to the point where I was comfortable enough, I'd still shop at 99 Cents Only because there the sense of domestic adventure remains. Ralphs is reliable, but it can't do that. Neither can Walmart. It's the one place I know that makes necessary errands tolerable.

A Traveling Name

My name has been in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Windsor, Ontario Canada. Saint George, Utah. Reno, Nevada. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 

I've never been to Canada. I only know it through what famous people have come from there to the United States. Ditto Saint George, Utah and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I've heard of them. I've no interest in visiting them.

I only knew Reno, Nevada from Sister Act. Then, after my family and I moved to Las Vegas, I only knew it was closer than it had ever been before. Five years later, we left Las Vegas, and that was still all I knew of Reno.

I've been thinking about this because of an assignment that Stephen K. Peeples recently gave me. He's a journalist who worked at The Signal newspaper in Santa Clarita when I started as his intern in 2006 through College of the Canyons' Cooperative Work Experience Education program (CWEE). He left the next year, but blessed man that he is, I started working for him again, two years ago on a freelance basis, doing audio and print transcriptions for him (the latter being .pdf files of articles, and typewritten manuscripts that he wants in Word), proofreading, and the occasional rewrite, and we've still got that rapport going.

Amidst his many projects, he's looking to restore his early career, pulling out unpublished articles from when he was a young journalist, and later articles he hadn't seen in years, wanting them on record in Word. This happened to coincide with the features he was writing for his website about what would have been John Lennon's 80th birthday, and one of my many tasks was to transcribe .pdf files of an article he wrote for the Signal's weekend Escape section from December 2, 2005, which noted that Lennon would have turned 65 the previous October 9. 

I noticed, on the bottom of the three .pdf files containing the article, that he had pulled it all from newspapers.com, and I got curious. I have in my closet a sealed plastic bin containing the entirety of my run at The Signal, including when I was made interim editor of the Escape section for five weeks after John Boston, a 30-year veteran at the paper, left, as he believed, rightly, that they weren't paying him what he was worth, and the owners at the time, based in rural Georgia (which was really useful for a newspaper operating in Santa Clarita, California), were indeed notorious skinflints. I also have some of my movie reviews from the Teentime pages that were in the back of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's now-defunct weekend Showtime section, which I wrote for from the tail end of middle school to the end of high school. But that's all I've got. I don't even remember what article got me second place in the Journalism Association of Community Colleges' mail-in competition when I wrote for the Canyon Call newspaper at College of the Canyons.

So I wondered what newspapers.com might have of my work. I went searching, and that's when I found that my name had been in more states and countries than I've been to (only if you don't count when my family and I spent five days moving cross-country from Pembroke Pines, Florida to Valencia, California in August 2003, and passed through Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona). 

The first time my name appeared in a book was not when What If They Lived? was published by BearManor Media in March 2011. I wrote to Roger Ebert's "Questions for the Movie Answer Man" column in very late 2001 because in his review of David Mamet's Heist, he says that the line spoken by Danny DeVito, "Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money!", is one of the funniest lines David Mamet has ever written. I didn't understand why or how it was funny, and I asked Ebert for his rationale. 

Now, I don't know if Ebert had a full-fledged website up and running at the time, but I remember that my question was answered. And many others followed on the same topic from other readers, who also didn't understand why the line was funny. Then came the publication of Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2003, which contained the Movie Answer Man questions and answers from the previous year. And there my name was, in print, in Ebert's book: "Rory L. Aronsky, Pembroke Pines, Florida."

I was proud of my reviews for Teentime, but to me, this was a mountain above that, the sun shining on me even brighter. My name was in a book! It was there for many to see! And I had a reason for being in that book!

Unbeknownst to me, until now, my name had traveled farther. And through newspapers.com, I've found that Ebert's "Questions for the Movie Answer Man" column was in newspapers too, syndicated in many places. I see here that my question and my name appeared in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursday, January 17, 2002. The Star-Phoenix of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada on Saturday, January 19, 2002. The Windsor Star of Windsor, Ontario, Canada on Saturday, December 29, 2001 (which I see is why I made the cut in Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2003; I was right on the edge to tip into the next year). The Daily Spectrum of Saint George, Utah on Friday, January 4, 2002. And the Reno Gazette-Journal on Thursday, January 3, 2002. I was going to graduate high school that year, and I'd barely been out of Florida, save for one notable time in 1994 when my family and I flew on Delta to Newark, New Jersey because my father's grandmother (maternal, paternal, I don't remember) was in the hospital. I was also told that I had been in New Jersey as a toddler, and that I had lost my Cabbage Patch Dolls figurine in the snow and was so upset over it. Only when the snow melted did my father's parents (not really grandparents, which is a whole history in itself that doesn't interest me enough to rehash here) find it and mail it to us back in Florida. I don't think knowing that my name had been in more states than I had been to then would have changed anything. Back then, I was gung-ho on becoming a full-time film critic somewhere, and I was going to get there (that changed after five weeks as an interim editor at The Signal. Not only was I unsure of where the industry was headed, just like everyone else in it, but I determined that I didn't want to live on an ulcer farm anymore. The upside is that the average deadline does not at all compare to a journalism deadline, so it puts me at an advantage in my work because I don't flinch in the face of them). It impresses me now, though, that my name has traveled like that.

And for some reason, I see here on newspapers.com that my review of The Producers for the website Film Threat ended up printed in the Tallahassee Democrat on Friday, December 23, 2005. I don't think Film Threat ever syndicated reviews like that. They appeared on the website, and that was that. I haven't seen the layout of it yet, but I'm interested to know.

Besides all that, in scrolling through my journalistic past on newspapers.com, I'm floored at how ambitious and prolific I was. That's not bragging, because I wrote movie review after movie review for the Teentime pages, earning its 2000 Teentime Movie Reviewer of the Year award, its 2001 Teentime Movie Reviewer of the Year award, and because I was graduating high school, the overall 2002 Teentime Reviewer of the Year award. I wanted that full-time career so badly, and man, did I ever try to work toward it. 

I think if I had found newspapers.com's holdings of my work in my 20s, I would have been embarrassed by my writing, thinking to myself, "Thank every powerful god within range that I can do better now than I did before." But now, at 36, having passed the point of no return to 40 (at 35, you still have a choice of sorts, can try to pretend to delay it), I want to remember my mindset back then, that burning ambition, that all-consuming passion for movies. I want to see if all that work (of which there's at least 310 pieces, if not more) reminds me of things I haven't thought of in years, that I didn't realize I still remember. I want to remember the late Bob French, one of the two kindliest editors I have ever known, when I interned at the Sun-Sentinel's satellite office in Weston, whose rare anger came as a total shock. There was one day when he was on the phone and his voice rose with a venom that would seem new to him, and the entire office went dead silent. His anger was an event, much like Halley's Comet. 

I also want to remember how I thoroughly admired John Boston, the other kindliest editor I have ever known, when I started at The Signal, to the extent that I got into Tootsie Roll Pops because he liked them, and started reading The New Yorker because he read it. I even had a subscription for a time. I'm still in touch with him every now and then, but back then, I wanted what he had, being so completely steeped in the Santa Clarita Valley, where he had lived since the mid-1950s. Having moved so many times in my life, I had never known a place like that and wanted to know what it was like (not for Santa Clarita, just the general feeling). Also, he was, and still is, a phenomenal writer (he writes weekly columns for The Signal, which has been under new ownership, local ownership, for some time now), and that was reason enough for me to want to be in his orbit, to learn how he did it and how he maintained it. When I was 11, I admired Andy Rooney, had a few of his books, and tried to write like him. I realized then that I couldn't because I was Andy Rooney, and I had to find my own style. But what people to admire as I tried to figure out who I was in journalism and what I wanted out of it! I'm glad to have done it, but I don't regret not being in the game anymore. Trying to get my next book projects going is busy enough for me. It's enough just to have the chance to be back in these memories, which don't come about all that often these days in the midst of my writing. But I hope to find pieces, work ethic examples, and moments that could even inform what I'm doing now.

You Age Around It

For the past few days, I've been watching videos of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover on YouTube. Living in Florida, for some years close enough to Walt Disney World to go every weekend, Tomorrowland was my dreamworld, a possible vision of the future that suited me, basic as it looked compared to other visions.

I liked that it didn't have an entire, demanding, underlying structure. You could walk Tomorrowland, you could go on Space Mountain, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (as it was called in my time), the Carousel of Progress, and let your imagination carry you. You were the future.

The last time I went on the PeopleMover was long before PeopleMover returned to the name (it was originally the Wedway PeopleMover from 1975 to 1994), as if the attraction wasn't already so obvious by its look and purpose. You could hardly mistake it for the spinning teacups in Fantasyland.

I missed out on the TTA at my Grad Nite in 2002, because the powers that be at the Magic Kingdom did not want rowdy, near-high school graduates throwing things from above, or jumping out of the vehicles while they was moving, or a host of whatever else their imaginations conjured, though likely accurate enough in years' past to put me at a disadvantage, given my love of the TTA and the Carousel of Progress, which was also closed because Audio-Animatronics are expensive. (Or at least me and the rest from Hollywood Hills High School were near-graduates. I know that there were other schools who had gone directly to Grad Nite after graduation.)

So the last time I was on the TTA was in 2000, when my father took all of us with him to the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando (According to this article, it took place from Tuesday, February 29 to Thursday, March 2, so I may have missed school then, which was worth it).We arrived early enough in Orlando to go to the Convention Center, see the exhibits, and meet whoever my father knew. (My father also may have wanted to go because Frank Barker of BellSouth was speaking, and even though he was back teaching for four years at that point, my father worked for Southern Bell (which later became BellSouth while he was there) for 19 years, and that experience was still very much with him.)

The next day, while my father spent the day at the Convention Center, my mother, my sister and I went to what was then Downtown Disney, to walk around, see what we hadn't seen in many years, and we also went to the then-AMC Pleasure Island 24, where my sister and my mother saw Snow Day, and I saw American Beauty for the third time (the first time was a press screening at the AMC Aventura 24 (17 miles north of Miami), and the second time was at the Muvico (now Cinemark) Paradise 24 in Davie).

The day after, we went to the Magic Kingdom, and my father said he'd meet us later, since he wanted to spend more time at the conference. Back then, with no cell phones, my mother designated a meeting place to check in throughout the day, and I had to. If only I had tried to convince her that Tomorrowland would be a good meeting spot. That would have been very convenient, because as soon as we got to the Magic Kingdom, and decided where to meet up, I made a beeline to Tomorrowland.

Before that, at the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC), which is also the monorail station, we learned that it was an Early Entry Morning for passholders and hotel guests. We were neither, but after hearing of our experiences going to Walt Disney World every weekend when we lived nearby, and sometimes during the week just for dinner, the older guy manning access to the monorail station let us through. And because of that, and my rush to Tomorrowland, I was able to ride Space Mountain three times before it started to get crowded.

Except for meeting up throughout the day and eating wherever we ate later on, I spent the entire day in Tomorrowland. For a while, I hung out in the arcade that used to be next to Space Mountain, and took advantage of the CD jukebox that played the music throughout the entire arcade. Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" sounds nice that way when you're walking around and also peeking through the one of the large porthole windows at the back, watching the train chug by. 

I don't remember if I went on Space Mountain a few more times that day. I probably went on the Carousel of Progress once or twice, or, I hope, three times at least. I wouldn't have missed that for anything, being one of my dearly favorite attractions. 

But one thing hits me now that I wasn't quite aware of that day, or even all the other times I went on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (and I'm sure I did many times that day, because with its constant cycling, which is one of its notable features, there was never a line for it). After passing the taller view of Cinderella's Castle, and turning into a tunnel, you pass an extensive diorama of Progress City, which was Walt Disney's vision for the future, and also inspired EPCOT. What's amazing about it is the dusky blue horizon in the background, which seems like it could stretch even further back.

But after that, on the right, is a portly robot waiting to board a small rocketship called the Cross Galaxy Express, the area of which, in one YouTube video, is decked out in muted Day-Glo colors, and in other later ones, up to at least March of this year, somewhat brighter.

When you're actually riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (PeopleMover is for those who ride it today), it's hard to take in all the details like that, like the sign for the Cross Galaxy Express, not only because you're moving fairly swiftly, but because there's so much going on around you, such as the brief memory of the diorama, and the narration playing above you, and next the windows looking down into what was then Mickey's Star Traders (souvenir store), but is now called just Star Traders. And then you're looking out on the Autopia track on the long stretch to Space Mountain.

It took the YouTube videos to really make me see the details of the robot waiting to board the rocketship, the Cross Galaxy Express name, the Day-Glo poster for Pan-Galactic Pizza, "Hot Delivery - Right to Your Planet." But one thing YouTube videos like those absolutely cannot express is the sheer number of years that have passed and all that has happened within them.

I last rode the Tomorrowland Transit Authority in 2000. Since then, I graduated high school (and lost out on riding the TTA at least one more time because of potentially rowdy Grad Nite attendees), moved to Southern California (first year in Valencia, the following eight years in nearby Saugus, all in the Santa Clarita Valley), worked as an AVID (college-facing program) tutor and as a substitute campus supervisor at La Mesa Junior High, where my father taught; attended , and graduated from, College of the Canyons; was an intern and then associate editor and then interim editor for the weekend Escape section at The Signal newspaper, also in Santa Clarita; moved to Las Vegas for five years; worked in the Clark County School District in myriad positions, finishing out my time there as an elementary school library aide; went through all of the stress and worry and sorrow of my father's stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis; moved to Ventura; spent a lot of time looking for work; witnessed my father pass away from the cancer, and my beloved, elderly dogs a few months before that; worked for a failed startup; was hired by Ventura College to work as an Instructional Lab Technician in the Learning Resources Center; worked as an administrative assistant at LIV Sotheby's International Realty in downtown Ventura; finally made it into the County of Ventura government after two solid years of trying, working a temp job in Elections for the Presidential Primary this year; worked again for Elections in early August for about a week and a half, ahead of the November election (there may be more work to come, but I couldn't work in their new, makeshift call center in Oxnard when I was offered because one, I don't have a car right now, and two, I'm within walking distance to the Government Center, where I worked all those times before, and wouldn't give that up); and am hopefully in the running for a few other job prospects.

And that's not to mention everything else in between, including my first book published in 2011 (which is thankfully still on Amazon), all that I clung to fiercely to try to survive in Las Vegas (including the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian Barbecue at the Walmart shopping center next to one of the runways at McCarran International, and the Vietnamese iced coffee at 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway), the five years I volunteered at the Green Valley Library in Henderson, the two times I was a substitute library aide at Paradise Elementary on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) campus, and immediately went to Lied Library in the hours before I had to report to work, and got lost both times on the way back, etc., etc., etc.

And here I am, well after graduating high school, 36 years old, and the robot and the rocketship and the Cross Galaxy Express sign are all still there, still lit up in Day-Glo colors. They never changed. They were spruced up, but their basic functionality never changed. 20 years and it's all still there. That's the kind of longevity we hope for in many things, but we age around it. I know that if I ever went back to the Magic Kingdom, I would still spend the entire day at Tomorrowland. Since 2000, I have added to my interest in science fiction with the Tron movies, especially Tron: Legacy, still hoping for a third one. I love the Blade Runner movies, and at least once a month, if not on DVD at least, I watch clips of Oblivion on YouTube, which also came from Joseph Kosinski, whose Tron: Legacy made him one of my favorite directors.

I'm still trying to actually read science fiction, because I know the imagination can be much more potent than what you see on the screen, but I haven't been able to settle in as much as I'd like to. Other books get in the way (lately, it's a collection of essays by the late Brian Doyle, who I discovered in one of the Best American Essays anthologies, and I'm anticipating new biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, John Steinbeck, James Beard, Jimmy Carter, and Abraham Lincoln from the library), but I'm also trying to find the right way in for me. I watch the Star Trek franchise here and there, and read it occasionally, too, but I want to be consumed by science fiction. I haven't found that entrance yet, which I hope will be the equivalent of when I used to walk through the entrance of Space Mountain and hear the recorded orchestral introduction that held the inspirational promise of the future. That, and the space music track further into the walkway, are the only two tracks from Walt Disney World that I have on my computer and still play occasionally.

So there's the robot still waiting for the flight. There's the old Tomorrowland Transit Authority logos on the Red Line rocket ship and a nearby column. There's the sign on the lip of the boarding window that says "Watch Your Rollers," before the robot that's in the ship to lift off. And I am older now, with a lot more responsibility, and far more ideas for books and novels and poetry and plays than I had back in 2000 and earlier (15 pages' worth in a Word file). But the wonder is still there. Wonder that the robot sculptures still stand. Wonder that the Day-Glo still glows. And, thankfully, I still remember the wonder I had wandering Tomorrowland, riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, and imagining and dreaming. I can count it as one of the few times I truly felt at peace in my life, and it's something to carry with me as I continue to seek it. To remember that sense of wonder is valuable. I think it's more muted in me now, more attuned to how I can use it in my own work, but I can get back to it whenever I like. 

The robots are still there because they're invaluable to that part of the TTA experience. Or upper management hasn't been able to think of what to replace them with. Either way, it's quite a contrast to look back on them on YouTube and realize not only that they're still there, but how far back I remember them. My life wasn't free and easy then, either, but in that day in Tomorrowland, and the other days I was there and went on Space Mountain and the Carousel of Progess and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, I lived my purest life, completely free to imagine, inspired, engaged, endlessly interested in how all of it ran and how that atmosphere was created. It certainly ties into who I am as a reader and a writer today, and I do like knowing more now than I did then, but it was really something back then to feel my imagination expanding as wide as the universe. I hope to have it again.

Pandemic Disappointment

I found out yesterday that there's a new Steinbeck biography coming out called Mad at the World, the first in 25 years as the marketing claims.

After filling out the "Tell Us What to Buy" form on the Ventura County Library website, to urge the powers that be to buy it, I suddenly remembered an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. It resided comfortably at the Ojai Library, possibly my favorite library in Ventura County (it feels like a wood-paneled reading room without the wood paneling, although its ceiling beams are crucial to that atmosphere), and one of my all-time favorite libraries, alongside Lied Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), the Boulder City Library well removed from Las Vegas, and of course the Ventura College Library (more formally the Evelyn and Howard Boroughs Library).

In the Ojai Library, my old friend used to face the first window before the side entrance to the Ojai Library because that's where biographies once were. It was a paperback edition of John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson, that I occasionally bumped into in past years elsewhere, but never fully read it. 

The Ojai Library not only invites you to explore what's deepest in your mind, but gently encourages you to give a try to that which you put to the side but can't completely dismiss because it's part of you. Before the end of last year, when my mother, my sister and I were in Ojai, I vowed to take it home with me and try it again, instead of eyeing it hopefully and then walking away like I usually did, certain that I already had too many books to carry home with me on the bus. I wanted a souvenir of Ojai to take home and this was it, and generally, whenever I checked out books in person from that library, I always read them because I didn't want to lose the magic I felt they had by dint of living there.

Here's the thing about institutions, such as libraries, that are closed during the pandemic: The people who make them what they are get busy. They reorganize. They streamline. Projects that were pushed to the netherworld because of the sheer number of things to do every day to keep a library open to the public rise and demand the attention that they know is now there.

For libraries, this also means weeding the stacks, taking a good hard look at what's gotten dusty, waterlogged, warped, but stayed on the shelves because that's what the library had. Take a book still readable in those conditions off the shelf and the hole it creates might not be filled. It's budgets, how many new books can be bought in the fiscal year, and a host of other factors. Sentimentality comes into the weeding, but there's no place for it if the library is to remain vital and approachable.

That's the reasonable, public-facing explanation. Sadness is left to patrons like me.

It's not that John Steinbeck, Writer is bad; it was always just the sheer length of 1,184 pages that I didn't have the patience for throughout the years, much as I admire Steinbeck and want to know more about him. The same thing happened that time before the end of last year. I didn't get through it. Now that I've taken up reading a lot more than I used to (and not just because of the pandemic; this has been going on before that), I figured that it was time to seek out my old friend, that somewhat waterlogged copy sitting elsewhere in the Ojai Library, away from that particular window, but still there.

I thought it would still be there. I looked it up in the Ventura County library catalog, and I was crestfallen. All there is of Jackson J. Benson is his biography of western writer A.B. Guthrie, Jr. and his anthology of critical essays about Steinbeck's short novels such as Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row. My old friend, one of many things that made me feel at home at the Ojai Library, is gone. Weeded. Every time I went to the Ojai Library, before biographies were moved, I looked for it as I passed by that first window, and sometimes that was all I would see of it. But it comforted me that it was there, the possibility that I might try again. With this pandemic, there are a lot of "Had I knowns..." in the world and of course, had I known, I would have sat down and finally read it the last time I checked it out of the library.

I decided to do something to honor it. From what I can tell so far, Interlibrary Loan isn't available again yet in Ventura County. I'm sure that not every participating library is at full strength yet for that. I wasn't going to wait, though. So I went to AbeBooks and found a fairly reasonably-priced paperback edition of John Steinbeck, Writer, under $10, which, for a 1,184-page book is pretty damn good.

This time, I will sit down and read it. Not because I paid for a copy, but because my old friend deserves it as a fond farewell. Should the day come when I can once again go inside the Ojai Library, I'll miss seeing it. I hope it got at least one more try with someone else.