Barry's Life in Napa Blog

My mother used to call out in the morning from the kitchen, "Rise and shine!" It came in a sing-songy voice that was intended to make me jump out of bed smiling, I suppose, but being an angsty teen (what other kind of teen is there?) it made me want to strangle her. When I look back on it now, it's easy to see how forced was her early-morning cheer. Up every day at 5 a.m. to make breakfast and pack a lunch for my dad, looking ahead to a day full of laborious repetition to make a home and feed the family - I wonder about the origin and the sincerity of the expression. But I know now that the presentation of a sunny demeanor to her piece of the world was as crucial in her daily agenda as the frying of eggs and the sweeping of floors - no matter what quiet despair she might indulge in after the school bus had come and gone. There is no shortage of persistently pleasant people in the world. You meet them in coffee shops and auto shops and they sell you long distance packages...

(My mother at age 18. ) I feel obliged to write about my mother today. "Obliged" is not the way you are supposed to feel on Mother's Day. I always wanted to be the loving son who doted on his mother but for some reason, some psychologically complicated reason, I could not achieve the level of devotion to her that I always thought she deserved. She was a kind, patient, giving, thoughtful woman who never did anything but love me. I loved her, too, and on an objective scale I don't think I was a bad son but I've never felt I was as good to her as I should have been. Maybe someday I will understand my feelings but today's not that day. Today I am thinking of moments... ...out in the yard with her when she made pickles in huge stoneware crocks, or watching her pluck a chicken, or do loads of laundry by hand in standing galvanized tubs, running the clothes through the wringer and hanging them on the line. ...her excitement on Election Day when our living room was th...

I would like to make the case today that reality is overrated. Reality is chock-a-block with disease, famine, genocide and infomercials. Reality imposes onerous taxation and rules and foisted Geraldo Rivera on the world. Reality has none of the redeeming qualities we seek out in our entertainments - try hard and success will come to you, the triumph of good over evil, true love always wins, bad guys get what they deserve, etc. In fact, reality likes to get right up in your face and make sure you're aware that the sleazy people usually win and have all the money, true love is irrelevant in the face of expediency, and trying hard and success are complete strangers. So in summation, reality can suck it. Counterpoint: reality, and the real people that cause it, can be damn funny. I offer as evidence two recent additions to the menu of amusing time wasters of which I am an aficionado. Shit My Dad Says is the brainchild of Justin Halpern, a guy from San Diego who started keeping track o...

Some of my friends know that I was a Girl Scout. Yes, I know, most of the male persuasion were Boy Scouts. I did some of that - Cub Scouts, Webelos (wtf?) etc - but my more formative time was spent tagging along with my mom when she was a Girl Scout leader for my sister and her friends. I learned all about making campfires and paddling canoes and, of course, lanyards, from the Girl Scouts. And let me tell you, that lanyard knowledge has served me well. There was a song - a corny song, for sure - that Girl Scouts sang back then, that said "make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold." I have had the simple truth of that brought home to me often of late, and feel the need to acknowledge it. A couple of months ago I had the chance to visit with C, a friend I've had since Reagan was in office. We spent one summer together and have been buds ever since. We can sit and talk like that summer was yesterday. Today I spent time with P who I've known sinc...

I used to watch tons of TV. It was mostly ritual or habitual behavior. Didn't matter much what was on - just a visual chewing gum. Not unlike old people sitting on a bench just watching people go by - something to do, without doing anything. Lately (and especially since I now live in The Hell That Is Basic Cable ) I don't watch so much TV. The set's most valued function is to lull me to sleep at night and murmur softly so I can't hear the silence that reminds me that I am alone. (This system works well until the wee hours when, inevitably, someone or other suddenly pops on shouting about Jesus. More about Jesus later. Bet you can't wait for that.) But there's one program running right now that has sucked me in - Life on the Discovery Channel. I've watched my share of "nature shows" in the past - dating all the way back to Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins. (I loved that show. It ran on Sunday nights and I loved it mostly beca...

I've never studied philosophy but I always thought I should. For someone who paid tuition to make smoke powder blow up in flashpots and learn how ladies' gloves were made from the skins of mice in the Elizabethan age, philosophy seemed like the natural next step in a progression toward an all-encompassing knowledge that was simultaneously quite useless. But just because I never studied it doesn't mean I don't consider myself something of an expert on the topic. After all, I have access to Wikipedia. Duh. Philosophy, then is: the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth, or the arts) by its critical, generally systematic approach...The word "Philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία [philosophia], which literally means "love of wisdom." I do love that wisdom. Watching Jeo...

When I was a kid there were always sweets in the house. Ice cream in the freezer, always. Those great big Hershey bars, the kind about four-by-six inches, stashed in a drawer or "hidden" in an electric fryer that sat unused on top of the fridge. And a cookie jar of some sort, on the kitchen counter, with some low quality and half-stale Fig Newtons or Nilla Wafers or some such. I knew where all the sweets lived because I was both a curious and fat kid. I made it my business to have a basic rolling inventory of everything that was in the cupboards, pantry or refrigerator. I think a "keep it away from the pudge" policy was the reason they were always trying to hide the good stuff. But being a sort of Sherlock Holmes of desserts, I sniffed it all out. That cookie jar, however, was always my last resort. If there was only one sort of crappy, cheap cookie in there, that might do in a pinch. But there was a tendency for two or three kinds of crappy, cheap cookies to end u...