Grandpa George

This is my grandfather George Swanson's grave at the Los Angeles National Cemetery, which I visited with Deena, Chris and Dean on Dec. 28, three days after the 45th anniversary of his death. I'll never forget Christmas day in 1965, when my mom got the call that he had died at the Sawtelle Veterans Home, a facility run by the Veteran's Administration not too far from the cemetery.

I'll also never forget the day of his funeral: the rain poured down as we sat under a canopy at his gravesite, the Army Honor Guard fired three rifle volleys in his honor, folded the flag and gave it to my mom. It was a very sad day, much like the second half of his life, after my grandmother divorced him. He was kind, gentle person we didn't see very often -- usually on Christmas eve because Christmas day was always spent at grandma's house. My mom has trouble remembering many things, but her memory of her dad and how much he loved his "Skeeter," as he called her, is very vivid. I shot these photos for her.



On a less somber note, after our visit to the cemetery, we hung out at Chris's apartment in Westwood, then headed to Santa Monica and enjoyed dinner and a beautiful sunset. I posted a few photos in a new Santa Monica gallery. Here is one of my favorites:

Family History

After my dad died in 2007, I was spent a lot of time going through the many things he left behind in drawers, cabinets and a shed next to his house. Among them, was his duffel bag (photo below) from his military service on board the ship LST 23 in the south Pacific during World War II. In addition to his uniform (pictured here) was a journal of those years.


Before being deployed to the war zone, he spent time on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he received his radioman's training. On one of his journal entries from that time is a single entry for the day: a woman's name. My first thought when I read it was, "I need to ask him about this -- who was she, and what did they do?" Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I could never again ask him anything -- ever again. The history of his life was now limited to what I knew, and what I could learn from his writings and photographs.

He was quite proud of his heritage and the Davidsons' role in the history of San Bernardino, so about 15 years before he died, he sat down and wrote the story of his life -- in pencil, by hand. He had impeccable penmanship, which I tried to emulate when I was younger, until -- like many people who turned to keyboards to "write" -- it deteriorated into an almost-unintelligible scribble.

I'm fortunate to have my dad's writings and the memory of many conversations about his life. My mom is another story, however. Overshadowed by my dad's persistence in documenting and sharing his family history, I realized I knew far less about Mary Ann Swanson, the shy, well-read writer and editor from Colton High School my dad married. And now, at age 82 and with her memory fading quickly, my opportunities are limited.

What I find fascinating about my mom now -- and my dad in his later years -- is that while she can't remember if she ate breakfast that day, she can name the names of all the classmates in the photo of her high school yearbook staff.

In her book "Infidel," Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes growing up in Somalia and learning the oral history of her clan and memorizing the names of countless generations of ancestors. Unfortunately, most of us know very little about our family histories, mostly because we don't take time to ask, or to document it.

Yesterday, while spending Christmas with my mom, the subject of her many paintings came up. As she often does these days, she wanted to discuss what will happen to the paintings (among other things) when she dies. She lost the ability and the interest to paint years ago, but in the '70s and '80s, she was very prolific and quite good at it. Among the paintings she did are two that I want to keep in the family.

One of them is shown in the photo at the top of this page -- an oil painting depicting the gas station her dad, George Swanson, owned and operated at the corner of Valley Boulevard (in those days, U.S. Highway 99) and Alder Avenue in Bloomington, Calif. If you click on it, you can see a larger version (shot with my iPhone, so not the greatest quality), that shows the Swanson name above the door. My mom and her parents lived here the 1930s and '40s. This version doesn't include the two rooms her dad added on later, but she recalls living for a long time in one room and using the outhouse behind the station.

The second painting (not shown here) is a wonderful depiction of Gallagher's Stables in Big Bear Lake, where she was born in 1928, and where her grandfather (and my middle-namesake) Patrick Gallagher kept horses. I've often wondered if it's the same location where you can now rent horses and ride around the south shore of the lake. I guess I'll never know.

Hello, Sunshine!

The rain has finally ended -- for a few days. Another big storm is expected to arrive tomorrow (Christmas). I emptied another one and one-half inches from my rain gauge Wednesday evening and tallied it up: 12 inches in four days. As my friend Bob Bottomley reminded me, that's a year's worth of precipitation in less than a week! It's hard to imagine one foot of water being added to the surface of our area in such a short time. We paid for it, too. It took me an hour and a half to make the 17-mile drive home from work on Wednesday, as I got caught among the hundreds of cars inching their way through the numerous detours around the mud-filled streets of Loma Linda.

When I saw that the sun was out yesterday, I decided to pack my Nikon in my bag and take it to work. I got some great shots of the college of engineering's new Materials Science and Engineering Building, which is about to open. The dean let us all go home at 3 p.m., and after making a few last-minute (are there any other kind?) gift purchases, I turned west on Park Avenue in Redlands and saw the glow of the sun as it began to set behind the hills of Loma Linda. After I grabbed the shot above, I turned my attention to the mountains to the east, still bathed in the light of the setting sun. I have scaled all of the peaks in the photos below (San Bernardino, Anderson and San Gorgonio), but never in these conditions. I think a pair of snowshoes is in my future.

The Zanja

I posted this as part of a series of iPhone photos on Facebook this morning, with the album title, "The Zanja at Flood Stage." I also uploaded them to Picasa if you want to see them all. My rain gauge at home has measured 10 1/2 inches of rain in the last four days and we were pounded with three inches overnight, which contributed to the torrent in the photos.

For non-Redlands people, the Mill Creek Zanja is a 12-mile irrigation canal built by the local Serrano Indians in the 1800s to divert water from Mill Creek to Loma Linda to support agriculture. Locals affectionately (and erroneously) call it "the Zankee." The word means "ditch" in the Serrano's native language.

Because the City of Redlands manages the water upstream now, the Zanja is dry most of the year, with an occasional seasonal trickle. My son Dean commented on Facebook today that he recalls playing in it when it was a dry ditch, but never seeing it like this. He also wrote, "Looks fun!", but the thought of being swept away, then getting trapped by debris under a bridge downsteam made me keep my distance. The swiftness and power of the water was incredible to behold.

The Zanja flows west alongside (and under) Sylvan Blvd., which is the southern border for most of the University of Redlands campus, including the fraternity houses you see in these shots. There was a similarly huge storm when I was a freshman there in late 1968 or early 1969 and I recall running across flooded Sylvan Blvd. to get to Wallichs Theatre for a lecture, slipping on the sidewalk and landing flat on my back. I'll never forget the embarrassment -- or the way the wind was completely knocked out of me. Ouch!

About a year later, while I was a pledge for the Kappa Sigma Sigma fraternity (AKA "the Birds"), our pledge project was to build a retaining wall to protect the frat house yard and a palm tree that was nearly lost in the big storm.

My fraternity brother Barry Rands, an engineering major and now a professional engineer in San Luis Obispo, designed the wall, complete with wire anchors deep in the ground within the yard. Many years later, when the wood finally rotted out, it was replaced, but the design is the same. As you can see, the palm tree is still standing:


Over the years, there have been many proposed developments that have threatened the Zanja and there is an ongoing effort by the Redlands Conservancy to preserve it. I hope they do.

After I graduated from the U of R, I rented a small house on Mill Creek Road in Mentone, a couple of miles upstream from here and about 20 feet from the banks of the Zanja. In those days, it was a gentle, flowing stream that ran year-'round, and I would open my bedroom window and listen to it as I fell asleep. It was the best sleep I ever got in my life.

It was during those nights of listening to the Zanja that I wrote the first verse of the only song I have ever written -- and never finished:

I have seen oceans
I've sat beside streams
Heard the love in the river's flow
A thousand time it seems

And every time I find myself
In such a beautiful way
I tell myself I'll sit down here
With her one day and I'll say:

Never, no never again, without you

I also have many fond memories of sitting on the bridge to the frat house in the photo below -- drinking a beer and smoking a joint. But that's a story for another time. Or maybe not.

Photos of the Day: Rainy Day Lunch-time Walkabout

Since we're in the midst of the most intense series of rain storms in a decade here in SoCal, most of us at the college opted to stay warm and dry and eat lunch at our desks today. Since I'm a little behind on my photo-a-day project, I grabbed my iPhone and my umbrella and took a 30-minute photo safari around the engineering buildings. Here are the results. The last one is looking toward the "C" (the white spec on the hillside in the distance) from my floor at Engineering Building Unit II. I was hoping to run there during lunch, but the sky opened up and mud fell out.

Photo of the Day: Foggy Mountain

I keep falling behind on this photo-a-day commitment. This one is from yesterday, taken with the iPhone while on my way to a holiday party at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology on Columbia Ave., north of UCR. I really liked way the fog drifted over the mountaintop. I hope you do, too.

Photo of the Day: Happy Birthday, Dad

Today would have been my dad's 86th birthday. This photo was taken at the house where he was born and grew up in San Bernardino. He was the world's greatest father and I miss him a lot. There is a lot to say about him, but that will have to come later. Happy birthday, dad!

Photo of the Day: Christmas 1986

The technical quality of this composite of two iPhone photos is about as poor as anything I'll ever post, but I love it. These two Christmas tree ornaments with photos of Chris (top) and Dean (bottom) are from 1986, when they were six and three and one-half years old. Those were good times!

I have lot of friends with young kids and it's a treat to watch them experience the joys of parenthood. I tell them to savor every moment, because one day their kids will be grown up and gone and they'll ask themselves, "Where did the time go?"

During the past few years, it's been a challenge to get the family together during the holidays with the boys living out of state. Some years, Deena and I haven't bothered to get a Christmas tree. One year, I bought a foot-tall rosemary plant shaped like a tree for the coffee table (it's now taking over my garden). This year, we went full tilt because we'll be blessed to have both of the boys home for more than a week! Not only will we get to enjoy Christmas with them, but we get to celebrate Dean's birthday, too. I can't wait.

[Full disclosure: I say, "we" went full tilt, but Deena did the decorating. I put the tree in the stand and helped string the lights.]

Every year when the boys were young, I would set up a cassette recorder in the living room and turn it on when they came into the room on Christmas morning. Last year, I got the tapes out of their dusty drawer and converted them to digital audio files. I love the sense of wonder in their young voices as they see that Santa opened the fireplace screen to get in, consumed the cookies and milk and left a note, and--most importantly--deposited a pile of gifts under the tree.

I'll be listening to those recordings during the holidays, and wiping the tears. They may be grown men, but they will always be my boys.

Photo of the Day: Stand for Peace

I thought it would be appropriate to take a photo of this rock during my lunch-time run to the "C" at UCR today. To me, it says, "Stand for Peace," which is what I heard Richard Holbrooke say about the United States in a taped interview on NPR this morning.

A career diplomat, Holbrooke died yesterday. He was a regular on Charlie Rose's interview program and always impressed me with the depth of his understanding of nations, their leaders and what motivated them. He was the consummate negotiator because he was able to get in the head of everyone at the table and understand their viewpoint. The world would be a better place if we could all do a little of that every day.

At the time of his death, he was serving President Obama as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, but his best-known achievement was brokering the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia -- the Dayton Peace Accords. In the NPR interview, he said the U.S. always stands for peace. I'm not sure Dwight D. Eisenhower would agree, given the way the military-industrial complex (a term he coined) has grown into a powerful economic engine, but I admire Holbrooke for saying it. I would like to think it's true.

Photo of the Day: Chemical Sciences

Chemical Sciences Building, University of California, Riverside

Photo of the Day: End of Day

This is a quick iPhone shot I grabbed while on my way back to my mom's house in Calimesa after doing her grocery shopping yesterday. I would have posted it yesterday, but I spent most of the afternoon and evening installing a new garbage disposal at her house, which was a colossal fail.

This location in Calimesa provides a great evening view to the west and I've shot a lot of pics from here on Sunday evenings over the years. Technically, it's not a very good photo, but I love this time of day, when the sky turns into a full spectrum of color, as if someone shined a light into a prism and aimed it at the horizon.

Help Save Jeté

Meet Jeté, the subject of today's Photo of the Day. It was taken by her owner and my good friend Andrea. Sadly, Jeté is sick. Very sick. With cancer.

Andrea moved from Redlands to Portland a few months ago and learned the bad news shortly after she got there: Jeté has vaccine-associated sarcoma. And the treatment is very costly. Thousands of dollars costly. You can read the saga of Jeté and how painful it's been for her and for Andrea on her blog, Crazy With a Side of Awesome Sauce.


If you're a cat lover like me and want to help, Andrea has a PayPal link on the blog where you can donate money for Jeté's treatment. She also has links to her Etsy shop, where she has handmade jewelry and accessories for sale, and to redbubble.com, where she has photos for sale (she is an amazing photographer, among her many talents). All the proceeds go to Jeté's treatment.

Here's one more way you can help: beginning today and until Jeté gets better, I will donate all of the proceeds from sales of photos or photo merchandise from my SmugMug gallery to Jeté's treatment fund. If you're looking for a gift for the holidays or something to decorate your home or office with, I hope you'll consider it. You can order prints, coffee cups, kitchen aprons -- just about anything you can imagine putting a photo on.

Jeté and Andrea will appreciate it. I will, too.

Photo of the Day: UCR Sunset

Here's another iPhone photo, taken about an hour ago from the landing on the fourth floor of my building at the Bourns College of Engineering at UC Riverside. My Facebook friends will recognize this view because I've posted many shots from this location. The "smoke stacks" are vents for the fume hoods in the labs in adjacent Bourns Hall.

This photo was processed with Pro HDR, an outstanding iPhone app for creating high dynamic range images. I bought Photomatix HDR ($99.00) for my iMac at home and use it for processing images from my Nikon D300, but I find this $1.99 app for the iPhone is just as good, if not better. I'm looking forward to my AT&T contract coming around so I can upgrade to the iPhone 4 and gain the two additional megapixels in resolution.

This photo also means the work day is done, so I'm out of here...

Photo of the Day: View from the "C"

My Facebook friends have seen plenty of images similar to this on my wall. It was taken with my iPhone from the trail to the concrete letter "C" on the mountainside east of UC Riverside's campus, where I work. I've been trying to run there at least twice a week during my lunch hour. It's a great workout, and today was no exception. I broke in my new Brooks Cascadia trail running shoes and they were awesome.

This image was processed with a cool iPhone app called Hipstamatic that my good friend and fellow "Brookie" Larissa Schwartz turned me on to. She's created some amazing images with it. It offers eight different "lenses" and 10 different types of "film," for a ton of interesting effects. (Well, not a ton, I guess. More like 80, but that's a lot!) For the record, this was taken with the Robo Glitter lens and Kodot XGrizzled film. The view is to the northwest, with the western end of the San Gabriel mountains in the distance, where Mount Baldy rises to more than 10,000 feet.

Photo of the Day: Mantitude

I'm back. We'll see for how long -- it's been a year since my last post. I've been thinking it would be cool to commit to shooting and posting one good photo every day. That would make for a pretty nice body of work -- and an interesting look back at the places and events of a year. So...here is a prelude to my New Year's resolution for '11.

I first saw this praying mantis on the message board we have on the wall in our kitchen. It apparently crawled or flew in and when I heard my cat Gracie making her stalking-prey sounds and creeping toward the chair that would give her access to this creature, I grabbed her and shut her in the bedroom with her sister Suzy.

With a large Tupperware container and a piece of paper, I captured this amazing insect, set it free in the grass of my back yard and went back inside for my Nikon...