Eskimo Pies and My Dad

by Karen Topakian

It’s quite ironic that today January 26, the anniversary of my father’s death (number 10), should occur during the same week that we recognize the Patent Day for the Eskimo Pie (January 24, 1922). Here’s why.

My father, a slim man, slightly less than 6 feet tall, always kept in good shape. But he liked his sweets. He could afford to eat dessert every day. Though he held the lofty title of President and co-owner of General Plating Company, he performed physical labor. 8 hours a day

During the evening, he would look to my mother and say, “Hey Al, got one of these?” to which he would make the gesture in the photo. This was the universal sign for an Eskimo Pie. The chocolate covered ice cream novelty. His dessert of choice.

If my mother said yes, his eyes would light up.

That was the cue for one of us, my sister, my mother or I, to get up and get him one from the freezer. (This was the 60s. It was what women and girls did.)

If she said no. He would follow with, “Pie-my? Cake-make? Cookie-mookie?”

My mother always had one of those. Thanks to the parade of home made baked goods produced by my grandmother who lived a few blocks away.

My father rarely went without dessert. But we all knew what he preferred. The simple Eskimo Pie wrapped in tin foil.

Who doesn’t like a sweater vest?

by Karen Topakian

Wearing sweater vests seems to please former Senator and Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum. Watching all of the fashion commentary reminds me of the time my family gave my paternal grandfather, Grampa K, a sweater vest for Christmas.

My grandfather suffered from heart problems. He was often thin. Being thrifty people, he and my grandmother kept the thermostat low to save on the heating bill. When the annual Christmas shopping list discussion occurred, my parents, (let’s be honest, probably my mother) thought that he might like a sweater vest to keep him warm. My mom was pleased to find an alternative to the standard gift of a plain old sweater.

When Grampa K opened up the box on Christmas morning and held up the knitted vest, he uttered the following words that have reached legendary status in our family, “It would be nice if it had sleeves.”

The Republican Presidential Hopefuls by the Numbers

by Karen Topakian

Today our some of our fellow Americans in Iowa will gather in their caucuses to select their Republican presidential candidate.

As they are doing so, I thought I would share some info about the 8 presidential hopefuls – the number of children they each have:

Mitt Romney – 5 sons

Herman Cain – 2, 1 son, 1 daughter

Ron Paul – 5, 3 sons, 2 daughters

Michele Bachmann – 5, 2 sons, 3 daughters*

Rick Perry – 2, 1 son, 1 daughter

Newt Gingrich – 2 daughters

Jon Huntsman – 7, 5 daughters**, 2 sons

Rick Santorum – 7, 3 daughters, 4 sons

That’s a total of 35 children. 18 sons, 17 daughters. Care to comment on their thoughts about family planning?

*They also helped raise 23 foster children all teenage girls

**Huntsman and his wife adopted two of their daughters. One from India and one from China.

I can still hear my father’s voice in my ear

by Karen Topakian

If my father were still alive today, we would be celebrating his 88^th birthday. He wouldn’t want much fuss. And we probably would hold off on the celebration until Peg and I arrived for the holidays. Then we would toast him.

My mother often said it was damn inconvenient for my father to be born between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because there were so many other celebrations taking place. She felt that he got short shrift.

I’m not sure if my father felt that way. He wasn’t the kind of guy who looked for a lot of attention.  But he did want to be remembered. So here’s one of my memories of my father.

As a child, I received the usual punishments for being mouthy and misbehaving. My parents would yell, send to my room and occasionally smack me across the butt. But the worst punishment of all came when I was older and he caught or found me doing something colossally stupid. Like…

Running out of gas.

Leaving the lights on in the car so the battery would die.

Forgetting to lock up the house.

Staying out past my curfew without calling.

Then he would ask the one question I hated to hear, “What were you thinking?”

Obviously I wasn’t thinking or I wouldn’t have acted so irresponsibly. I must have been a slow learner because he asked it often. And sometimes for the same mistake.

To this day, when I do something that falls into the mega-stupid category, I can hear my father ask that inevitable question. I still don’t have an answer. But at least I still can hear his voice.

How long is 6 seconds?

by Karen Topakian

According to a study by the Brooklyn Museum, the average visitor looks at a piece of art for 6 seconds. Really? Only 6 seconds?

6 seconds to scan the face of the Mona Lisa?

6 seconds to stare at Picasso’s Guernica?

6 seconds to gaze at Warhol’s Marilyn?

6 seconds to enjoy Monet’s Water Lilies?

6 seconds to view Michelangelo’s Statute of David?

That seems too short of a time span to enjoy such masterpieces. Or is it?

I asked myself what else takes 6 seconds.  So I could compare. Here’s what my quick Google search uncovered.

According to Zen habits, 6 seconds is the length of time to experience one relaxing breath. 2 seconds breathing in through your nose. 4 seconds exhaling through your mouth.

Globally, tobacco products kill every 6 seconds

Every 6 seconds someone is infected with HIV.

The Hewlett Packard fax 2140 can transmit a page of copy in 6 seconds.

Orkhan Ibadov says you can hypnotize someone in 6 seconds.

One way to read an EKG strip is to count the number of R waves in a 6 second strip and multiply by 10.

Apparently a lot can happen in 6 seconds. Doesn’t art deserve more of our attention than a fax machine?

The Answers Can be Found in the Holy Grail

by Karen Topakian

Local government officials struggle with ways to confront or approach the leaderless-by-design Occupy movement. King Arthur experienced the same frustration in Monty Python’s epic film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Read this short bit of dialogue for inspiration.

ARTHUR and PATSY riding.  They stop and look.  We see a castle in the distance, and before it a PEASANT is working away on his knees trying to dig up the earth with his bare hands and a twig.  ARTHUR and PATSY ride up, and stop before the PEASANT

ARTHUR

Old woman!

DENNIS

Man!

ARTHUR

Man.  I’m sorry.  Old man, What knight live in that castle over there?

DENNIS

I’m thirty-seven.

ARTHUR

What?

DENNIS:

I’m thirty-seven … I’m not old.

ARTHUR:

Well – I can’t just say:  “Hey, Man!’

DENNIS

Well you could say: “Dennis”

ARTHUR

I didn’t know you were called Dennis.

DENNIS

You didn’t bother to find out, did you?

ARTHUR

I’ve said I’m sorry about the old woman, but from the behind you looked …

DENNIS

What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an inferior …

ARTHUR

Well … I AM king.

DENNIS

Oh, very nice. King, eh!  I expect you’ve got a palace and fine clothes and courtiers and plenty of food.  And how d’you get that? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma, which perpetuates the social and economic differences in our society!  If there’s EVER going to be any progress …

An OLD WOMAN appears.

OLD WOMAN

Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here …  Oh! how d’you do?

ARTHUR

How d’you do, good lady … I am Arthur, King of the Britons …can you tell me who lives in that castle?

OLD WOMAN

King of the WHO?

ARTHUR

The Britons.

OLD WOMAN

Who are the Britons?

ARTHUR

All of us are … we are all Britons.

DENNIS winks at the OLD WOMAN.

… and I am your king ….

OLD WOMAN

Ooooh!  I didn’t know we had a king.  I thought we were an autonomous collective …

DENNIS

You’re fooling yourself.  We’re living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes …

OLD WOMAN

There you are, bringing class into it again …

DENNIS

That’s what it’s all about …  If only -

ARTHUR

Please, please good people.  I am in haste.  What knight lives in that castle?

OLD WOMAN

No one live there.

ARTHUR

Well, who is your lord?

OLD WOMAN

We don’t have a lord.

ARTHUR

What?

DENNIS

I told you,  We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune,  we take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

ARTHUR

Yes.

DENNIS

… But all the decision of that officer …

ARTHUR

Yes, I see.

DENNIS

… must be approved at a bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs.

ARTHUR

Be quiet!

DENNIS

… but a two-thirds majority …

ARTHUR

Be quiet!  I order you to shut up.

OLD WOMAN

Order, eh — who does he think he is?

ARTHUR

I am your king!

OLD WOMAN

Well, I didn’t vote for you.

ARTHUR

You don’t vote for kings.

OLD WOMAN

Well, how did you become king, then?

ARTHUR

The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the water to signify by Divine Providence … that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur …That is why I am your king!

OLD WOMAN

Is Frank in?  He’d be able to deal with this one.

DENNIS

Look,  strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords …that’s no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

ARTHUR

Be quiet!

DENNIS

You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

ARTHUR

Shut up!

DENNIS

I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!

ARTHUR

(Grabbing him by the collar)

Shut up, will you. Shut up!

DENNIS

Ah! NOW … we see the violence inherent in the system.

ARTHUR

Shut up!

PEOPLE (i.e. other PEASANTS) are appearing and watching.

DENNIS

(calling)

Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!

ARTHUR

(aware that people are now coming out and watching)

Bloody peasant!

(pushes DENNIS over into mud and prepares to ride off)

DENNIS

Oh, Did you hear that!  What a give-away.

I Still Love the Nevada Test Site!

by Karen Topakian

Peg and I are often asked how we met. We always say at Greenpeace. Which is true. But Peg was my hero before I ever met her. Or knew her name.

Here’s why.

In early April 1986, while driving my old gray Volvo to the San Francisco Art Institute where I was a graduate student, I was listening to the radio.

KALW was broadcasting a BBC report that members of Greenpeace had hiked through the desert at the Nevada Test Site and stopped the Mighty Oak underground nuclear weapon test by occupying ground zero.

Mighty Oak was not just your run of the mill nuclear weapons test. It was a test of defiance.  A global slap in the face.

President Gorbachev had recently announced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. He challenged President Reagan to join him in signing a treaty banning nuclear tests. Reagan responded by scheduling Mighty Oak.

Once the US government announced the schedule of the test, the anti-nuclear movement moved into high gear to stop it anyway it could. By lobbying. By protesting. Greenpeace chose to stop it, literally, by occupying the site.

Instantly, I wanted out of my car and art school and back into anti-nuke activism.  (An avocation I had left behind in RI to pursue a career as a fine arts filmmaker.)

I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to hike through a hot dusty desert to stop one of the most egregious acts committed by our government – the design, production, and testing of nuclear weapons.

All day long, I thought about the audacity of the US and the bravery and courage of the Greenpeace members.  Their ability to stop the test, if only for a matter of hours, fueled my adrenaline.

Art school be damned. I wanted back into the world of activism.

Fast-forward 11 months to March 1987. Where my wish came true. Greenpeace hired me as a nuclear disarmament campaigner to work on the Nuclear Free Seas campaign. (Two months before I received my MFA.)

While at Greenpeace, I met and fell in love with Peg Stevenson.

One day in passing, she mentioned that she was one of the people. One of the people who had hiked through the Nevada Test Site desert in April 1986. To occupy ground zero. Peg Stevenson and her colleagues had stopped an underground nuclear weapon test.

Not only had I scored a dream job. But my girlfriend had been my hero before I even met her.

P.S. If you’re interested in reading about Greenpeace’s occupation of ground zero, check out Mike Roselle’s book, Tree Spiker. The book starts with this action.

 

I’d Rather Fight than Switch My Bank

by Karen Topakian

A recent post on Good urged people to leave their big banks on Nov. 5, Bank Transfer Day. For smaller community banks or credit unions.

If you’re looking to move banks, here’s a major shout out to Community Bank of the Bay.

I’ve been a depositor at this Oakland-based bank since the last millennium.  And I’ve never looked back.

My switch occurred when the Agape Foundation’s bank, Wells Fargo, announced it was charging its business customers a fee for depositing funds too frequently. Our accountant told us to deposit checks whenever we received them but our bank now was going to charge us to do so.

I complained about it to our financial manager, Kate Campbell, who recommended that we switch. To Community Bank of the Bay.

Once I looked into their services, philosophy and mission, I was sold.

I loved them so much that I made them my personal bank. And recommended them to every one of Agape’s fiscal sponsorship groups and grantees.

Through the years, Agape deposited millions of dollars at CBB. All by mail. Not one deposit was ever lost. Community Bank of the Bay even sponsored Agape’s annual peace prize event.

Here’s why I love them. This bank answers the phone when I call. And they know who I am. I can bank online. If I use ATMs anywhere in the world, they will refund me a maximum of $10 a month for the fees charged by the other bank. Their staff members are courteous, intelligent and helpful.

Plus they offer a Bay Area Green Fund providing financing to local green businesses for green purposes. And they were the first Green Bank in Oakland.

Tell me, does your bank match up?

SF Walk of Fame, Why Not?

Hollywood has one. Now Cambridge’s got one. SF should have one, too.  A star-paved Walk of Fame.

We’ve got stars and plenty of ’em. If you only count the ones born here. One website counted 424. We’ve got enough to line Market Street from end to end.

Here are a few that clearly deserve a star.

Writers like Pierre Salinger and Robert Frost (He may have moved to New England when he was 11 but he was born here.)

Musicians like Jerry Garcia, Paul Kantner

Architect Julia Morgan

Comedian Margaret Cho

Voiceover artist Mel Blanc (Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn)

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

Photographer Ansel Adams

Senator Dianne Feinstein

Anthropologist Dian Fossey

Even Casper Weinberger

O.J. can lead the Walk of Shame

Then there are the people who became famous in San Francisco

Like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jewelle Gomez, Dashiell Hammett, Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Robin Williams, Mark Twain, Harvey Milk, Grace Slick, Danielle Steel, Armistead Maupin….

Whad’ya think? Don’t we deserve a star studded Walk of Fame?

Roz Chast undercovers the truth behind blogging

Need I say more