Blog Archives

Remembering bulletin boards...

2/26/2018

My family moved into the house I’m living in now a little more than 50 years ago. My mother died six years ago, and my brother and sister and their families are all over the place. I’ve been back and forth across the country several times over a number of years, and returned to live here with my dad.

Way back when we first moved in, my sister and I shared the room I’m in now. I was going into sixth grade, she into seventh. In other words, we were pre-teens. I know that means something different to all of us, but at the same time, there is some common ground when we think of pre-teen. Young enough to be far from driving, old enough to be thinking about dating (not doing it, but thinking about it). And in my case, right at that perfect age for teen idol worship.

Almost as if she knew, my mother bought each of us a bulletin board on which we could put whatever we wanted. Maybe she did know at that, since my mother was one of the screaming teenagers who went downtown to see a very young Frank Sinatra perform, wearing her trench coat and screaming, “Frankie!”

I remember little about what my sister did with hers; all I remember is it wasn’t like mine. Because I was the one with the subscription to 16 Magazine. I had access to pictures of all of my faves (as they liked to put it). So my bulletin board was filled with pictures of Bobby Sherman (Here Come the Brides), the Monkees, Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere and the Raiders), and Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, and Clarence Williams III of Mod Squad.

Every month a new issue would arrive, and I would plan my new bulletin board. It was laid on my bed and carefully arranged, trying this picture in one place, moving another over here. Sometimes everything had to fit within the confines of the board. Other times I’d let things hang down lower so I could fit in a really good centerfold picture.

Bobby Sherman

Eventually I discovered Tiger Beat at the drugstore, and my world expanded. Their pictures were glossy on every pages, not just the covers. Between the two, I spent several years adorning my bulletin, celebrating the ritual of the changing of the pictures. The time came when the subscription to 16 wasn’t renewed – I wanted something else for my birthday. The bulletin board had big gouges in the cork, and one week when my sister and I were away, my mother redecorated our room and when we returned, the bulletin boards were gone.

Mark Lindsay

Looking back, I realize that my bulletin board was one of the few things I controlled, one of the few ways I had to express myself. There was one month I made a daring decision – I would focus the entire bulletin board on one person only. It was no contest – it had to be Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders. I got very creative and used some fluorescent pink wrapping paper as an accent because the primary picture was this color photo that was mostly black and white anyway.

Why do I choose to write about this today? Well, today I put up a new version of a bulletin board in that very same room, more than 50 years later. Actually, it’s three smaller bulletin boards in hexagonal shapes, and of course, the pictures and items on it are quite different. The one similarity is that, just as it was more than 50 years ago, it is an expression of who I am today – what matters to me, who matters to me, my priorities, my dreams, my memories. It isn’t complete yet, but when I finish posting this I will go to my printer and take the little copy of the Mark Lindsay picture and put it up on my new bulletin board. I will honor the person I was then, and the dreams of my youth. I still dream, though my dreams look a little different now…

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on…”
William Shakespeare

Take care,
Doc

(l to r) Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III, Peggy Lipton - The Mod Squad

A thousand words...

2/19/2018

This week I thought I'd do something a little different. I'm going to share some pictures from the last few years and write a little something about each one. These will all be pictures I've taken myself.

To the right is a closer look at a school of fish, this one in the Open Sea exhibit.

This picture on the left is from the kelp forest at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was mesmerized by the school of fish swimming together in the lower part of the picture, and the way the starfish seems to stretch out each of its arms to embrace the water. I would move from one panel to another to see different perspectives. There are two stories - this picture is from the first floor. The fish in the top right may be one of the tiger sharks, which swim right up to the glass.

Sunset at Asilomar Beach. No matter how many times I walked the paths at Asilomar, the landscape, the water, the light had changed. It was never the same two days in a row.

The footprints in the sand on the left are those of a mountain lion. I took this on my first visit to Asilomar, walking along the boardwalk that winds through the dunes. There are signs posted throughout the property reminding guests that mountain lions do come on the grounds, generally hunting the deer that populate the area.

It's hard to tell from this picture how large those footprints are - I'm an adult, and they are approximately the size of my fist. Not tiny...

As you can see, another sunset, another view from the path at Asilomar.

The sun is trying to break through the mist at Asilomar. Beyond that mist is Pebble Beach, where the Pro-Am golf tournament is underway. The wild winter ocean is raging, and you can almost taste the salt in the air.

Can you see the double rainbow on the left picture? It's harder to see on the left (same rainbow). I was driving home from work when I saw this, and had to stop and take a picture. At Asilomar, of course.

Hope you've enjoyed this little tour of Asilomar and the Aquarium. Enjoy the rest of the Olympics!

Take care,

Doc

Up close and personal...

2/12/2018

The Winter Olympics are well underway, and a local sportswriter wrote disparagingly this morning, saying no one is watching or interested because there are no stars.

I beg to differ. I'm old enough to remember Jim McKay and the "Up Close and Personal" segments on the athletes - not just the US athletes, but also athletes from other countries who might be complete unknowns to the US audience.

It was a great way to follow the Olympics, and I often found myself rooting for people like Soviet skaters Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev after hearing their stories. I discovered the incredible Jean-Claude Killy, and learned about the Norwegian ski-jumpers. It broadened my world to see sports I'd never seen like luge, and realize that athletes in other countries had the same hopes and dreams as the US athletes.

So, my original intention was to write about how this time I’m watching curling and beginning to understand how it works, and enjoying athletes from other countries, not just the US athletes. In a way, I enjoy our athletes more because I see them as part of a greater whole.

But when I started to write about Jim McKay, I found myself remembering how he anchored the coverage of the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes in Munich, and the weight of grief in his voice when he announced that they were all dead. He is the only sportscaster to win a news Emmy, which he won for that coverage.

He was the host of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and you always wanted to tune in because you never knew what or who you might see. He had a gift for fitting in no matter the sport or the athlete.

For a time, he covered the Triple Crown, and although it was hard to let go of the quirky Heywood Hale Broun and the great Jack Whittaker, I came to love Jim McKay at the Kentucky Derby as well. It seemed he had the same affinity with the horses that he did with the human athletes.

More than any broadcaster, sports, news or commentary, Jim McKay was the embodiment of the spirit of the Olympics. His genuine expression of interest and wonder made our common humanity a reality, even if only for an hour and a half, or a week or two.

Take care,

Doc

Super...duper?

2/5/2018

Yesterday was the Super Bowl. I watched the first half, then turned it off, though I did check the score periodically until the end of the game. Today, I watched Good Morning Football so I could hear Nate, Peter, Kay, and Kyle give their takes on the game, and see some of the key plays I missed.

More and more I have found that my greatest pleasure in football is in the analysis of it. That probably makes a lot of folks cringe. Me too, in a way. I do remember the awe I felt watching Lynn Swann make an impossible reception of a Terry Bradshaw pass, and there's no question I can still feel that awe with Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger.

The thing is, I can't forget the sight of Ryan Shazier lying on the ground unable to move his legs in Cincinnati last fall. Yes, he is back up on his legs now, with help, but I still can't forget. Nor can I forget listening to Terry Bradshaw talk with Arsenio Hall about his experience of dementia, a souvenir from his playing days. The hit on Brandin Cooks yesterday made me feel sick.

It isn't that people should take risks - life is a risk. We can't hide in our houses and cower in fear that something might happen. Heck, I could trip on a chair leg or an electrical cord at home and break an arm.

A rock formation in Arches National Park in Moab, Utah that reminds me of the Lombardi Trophy

With the Winter Olympics coming up, there are plenty of sports I watch that are dangerous, like luge and snowboarding. Two of my all-time favorite sports are horse racing and Indy Car racing, and those are also dangerous. I remember watching the Breeders Cup the day Go for Wand broke down. There were two races with breakdowns that day, and I cried my way through the races, but I didn't turn the television off.

Steve Haskin wrote an incredible blog post a couple of years ago, One Death too Many, which brought up some similar questions. He started it off by saying: There comes a breaking point in every person’s life when you ask yourself if your passion in life is worth the heartache that accompanies it.

I took this picture of Unbridled's Song the day I met him, one of my favorite racehorses

That's a choice we have to make when we love anyone or anything. After my yellow Lab Blarney died, one of my neighbors said that was why she didn't have pets. She just couldn't bear to lose them.

I understood, but if I hadn't been willing to lose Blarney, I never would have had the indescribable joy of living with her for the six-and-a-half short years of her life. I had her from the time she was eight weeks old, and remember taking her to Cape Cod for a week, looking into her eyes one night and saying, "Who are you?" And I remember the night she tangled with a skunk, and even after several tomato juice baths she still had an intense smell. She was so upset she wanted to sleep right next to me, and I didn't have the heart to push her away. And I remember her grinning with delight as the kids in the neighborhood would step on her toes and inadvertently pull her tail and ears. She never growled, never nipped, she just loved it.

So I suppose you could say the football players are willing to take the risks of the game. And that's fair enough. But when I feel sick at so much of what I see as I watch, I wonder have I reached the point where the sickness outweighs the awe.

Whether it's football, horse racing, or Indy Car, I study the players/horses/jockeys/drivers, I know the owners, I know the teams and trainers, the pit crews and coaches, and I love weighing the possibilities and strategies and then seeing how it all plays out.

I don't pretend to have any answers, for myself or anyone else. What I do know, is that, like Steve, I need to ask the questions.

Take care,

Doc

Blarney, with my parents, many years ago - my mother loved Blarney so much she let her on the porch furniture!

dialogue with doc

Remembering bulletin boards...

A thousand words...

Up close and personal...

Super...duper?

Carol (Doc) Dougherty

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