Three Gifts for Under $5

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Kate

Devoted It Happened at Purity fan and first-class Purity clerk Alana became inspired by this blog’s frequent references to Taaka Vodka. (Either that or the number of 200 ml bottles she sells each day.)

On Valentine’s Day, she cobbled up this clever greeting:

Cost: $2.09 for the Taaka + 10-cents for the bag.

This one might work for Easter or perhaps to cheer up a sick friend:

$2.09 + $2.50 for the card. (The basket is not for sale, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could buy it?)

There are many occasions for which this would work:

The party’s at The Purity! $2.09/bottle + 25-cent toppers from the toy vending machine.

Thank you Alana! I hope you inspire others to share their Taaka Vodka gift ideas with It Happened at Purity.

The Incredible Becky Walker

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Kate

Becky Walker’s first year as a Fort Bragg Middle School math teacher was 1997-98, the year our son Harrison was in sixth grade. She looked more like a junior executive of a Fortune 500 company than a teacher in a school on the Mendocino Coast. She wore pant suits and pumps, and often pulled her hair into a severe ponytail with a puff of bangs. It was unsettling.

She exuded the warmth of a Marine drill sergeant. Her job was to teach math to children. And they would learn. Oh yes, they would.

As time passed, Becky also learned a thing or two. (Living in Fort Bragg, California does that to a person.) She began to relax her professional guard and expose her playful side. The pant suits disappeared, her hair became casually styled, and she grew to be hilariously funny. Still, she has never compromised her quest to elicit high standards of behavior from herself and her students.

I feel fortunate to have grown close to Becky over the years. I’m in awe of how this dynamic woman has blossomed from middle school to high school teacher to vice-principal to principal of Fort Bragg High School.

In honor of her birthday on March 24, I propose a series of action figures dedicated to her superhuman abilities.

Thunder Queen

Towards the end of her first year of teaching, the sixth grade students went on the traditional camp out at the Boys and Girls Club Camp Mendocino. Mayhem reigned as kids disembarked the bus, wrestled with camping gear, and frolicked like young puppies. A group of teachers were barely able to corral them into a grassy area.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” shouted a voice with the force of a bullhorn. All 200 students froze. “Sit down! Now!” Two hundred students sat.

Becky shouted instructions and rules. If a student looked away or had the audacity to whisper to a neighbor, they were called out. “Mr. Riley, your eyes me, please.”

When she finished, I turned to Harrison and whispered, “My God, that woman can yell.” His face burst into a smile. “Isn’t she great?”

Boundary Maker

Becky is a genius at defining clear boundaries of acceptable behavior. When she was a teacher, her room was intersected by a laser light grid in 3-D visible to only her and the students. As long as a student stayed within the confines of that grid, he or she was lovingly attended to by Ms. Walker.

Step a toe outside and Boundary Maker awakened the wrath of Thunder Queen. A quick verbal smack down snapped the kid back into place where he or she would once again be treated kindly.

If somebody violates my weak boundaries, it can take days, weeks, months or even years for me to speak politely to them, let alone kindly. Not Boundary Maker. Boom! Done. Let’s move on.

Antenna Woman

On campus, Becky can carry on a conversation with an adult while tracking every student in the hallway. In the middle of a sentence, Antenna Woman will arouse Thunder Queen. “Mr. Myers, keep your hands to yourself!” She returns to the conversation, picks up the sentence, and finishes her thought.

Whenever I spoke with Becky at school, there were numerous disciplinary interruptions that made me jump with alarm. Yet Becky never gave me less than her full attention.

This alone qualifies her as a Super Hero.

Pack Leader

One day, I participated in the eighth grade’s cultural diversity potluck and assembly. After the luncheon, the kids were ramped up. Becky settled them by loudly announcing, “I expect you to be quiet as we walk to the auditorium. We’re going to pick up another class along the way and I won’t tolerate even a whisper as we go through the halls. Sixth and seventh grade classes are in progress and we will respect their need for quiet.”

She assembled her students in the hallway and gathered the other class for a total of 60 eighth graders. Her full-bodied voice directed, “We’re going to start walking now. If anybody makes a peep, we’ll back up and start again.”

Ten steps forward. Stop. The talkers were ordered to the front of the line, next to Ms. Walker. Ten steps back. A review of the rules—No talking or we’re backing up. Ten steps forward. Stop. More rule breakers were moved to the front of the line. Another review of the rules. Ten steps back.

On the sixth attempt, the silent group arrived at the auditorium, a bit drained by their hard won accomplishment, yet faces sporting proud grins. They had climbed Mount Olympus, a journey plagued by fits and starts, but motivated by Ms. Walker’s unwavering belief that they would make it.

Shaper of the Adolescent Mind into Something Resembling Human

Becky creates an environment where the rules are clear. She generously praises, encourages, laughs with, and enjoys her students. As a result, they strive to please.

If she has to yell to get her point across—well, anyone who has dealt with teenagers knows that hormonal surges make pudding of their brain matter, which can block their ability to hear anything but high decibel sounds.

Whenever my kids were in her class, they exhibited a higher level of maturity as evidenced by such adult statements as “Ms. Walker says you always need to have a savings account because you never know when you’ll get an infected ingrown toenail that requires medical attention,” and “Pies aren’t square, they’re round, silly” (which refers to area of a circle = pr²).

Gary and I found these quotes fascinating. Our adult children find it haunting that they remember them all these years later.

In eighth grade, our daughter Laine did a Power Point presentation for a homework assignment. Becky called to say that Laine’s outstanding effort made her cry. We felt like we were raising the next Einstein.

A few years ago on Becky’s birthday, I stood in the lobby outside her vice-principal’s office with a young fellow who looked down in the dumps. He said he’d just been suspended for a week and was waiting for his dad to pick him up.

When Becky emerged, I handed her a gift. She was giddy as most of us are when being honored on our birthday. As we chatted, the student who she’d just kicked out of school looked up and smiled. “Happy Birthday, Ms. Walker.”

Her birthday is this Sunday. Let’s do a little math problem to figure out her age. She was 24 years old when she started working for the Fort Bragg Unified School District in the fall of 1997. In March of 1998, she turned 25.

2013 – 1998 = x + 25 = OMG, she’s that old?

Take a moment to wish her a happy day. (She has a Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/beckycwalker?fref=ts. Or you can leave a comment here and I’ll pass it along.)

If you were once her student, tell her how Thunder Queen, Boundary Maker, Antenna Woman, and Leader of the Pack worked to shape your mind into something resembling human.

Stupid February

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Kate

Okay, I’m going to call it—February is the stupidest month of the year (so far). The following are three acts of idiocy reported in the Fort Bragg Advocate-News last month:

One arrested for DUI causing outage

On Friday, February 15^th, a 35-year old local man used his 2008 Chevy Suburban to celebrate the end of the work week in an interesting manner. Around 11:00 pm, he hit a parked car with enough force to move it 10 feet onto the sidewalk.

I imagine him having a moment of shocked sobriety as he backed up, slammed the vehicle into drive, floored the gas pedal, and zoomed forward 30 feet to hit and shear off a main PG&E power pole.

Goal!

When the police arrived, they discovered Mr. Chevy Suburban attempting to flee the scene. He managed to drive about 25 feet despite major front-end damage and the absence of his front passenger tire (in the whirlwind, it had been ripped from the axle).

Fort Bragg Advocate-News photo

As his Friday night party came to an end, the adventure for 2,600 Fort Bragg residents deprived of power was just beginning—and lasted until 9:30 the next morning. I suppose we should be grateful that he allowed us to unexpectedly experience a simpler time when electricity, electronic entertainment, and central heating didn’t exist.

Pair nabbed while packaging marijuana in motel room

I guess if you’re from out of town and buy a crap-load of marijuana that needs to be packaged for sale and you don’t have friends or family to stay with, it would make sense to rent a motel room. It would also make sense to behave yourself and be very quiet.

On February 25^th, Fort Bragg police were called to a local motel to investigate a domestic disturbance.

They heard a gal yelling at a guy. The guy came outside. As police questioned him, they smelled marijuana. They peeked inside the room to see “packaging material and large garbage sacks full of processed marijuana.”

A search warrant was obtained and 16 pounds of pot was confiscated along with packaging material. The domestically-disturbed couple was arrested.

Maybe the next time they’re in a motel room processing pot and he foolishly does something to tick her off, she’ll use her “inside voice” to resolve the situation.

High-risk ‘honey oil lab’ cleaned up

Perhaps you know all about honey oil, but I did not. (I grew up in Spokane, Washington in the last century.) Thanks to these dumb asses in Willits, I have garnered new terminology to add to my growing knowledge of the marijuana industry.

On February 26^th, the Mendocino County Major Crimes Task Force arrived at a duplex in Willits where they found “150 butane cylinders being used in an alleged marijuana honey oil extraction operation.”

The two geniuses running this operation had placed the highly flammable cylinders near a fire burning in a fireplace. They also possessed a half-ounce of meth and 25 pounds of pot. Oh—and they had a child—a four-year old child.

Of course they did.

They were each charged with a bunch of stuff and the guy was also charged with “being armed with a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony and committing offenses while out on bail.”

Of course he was.

Oh—and he is currently “facing court after his arrest in June 2012 for possession of a controlled substance for sale.”

Oh—and “he was picked up again in January 2013 for possession of a controlled substance for sale, possession of a weapon in commission of a felony and committing a crime while out on bail.”

Of course, of course, of course.

Now some of you may be curious about honey oil. Thankfully, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News article (which was actually a reprint of a Willits News article) gives an explanation:

“To extract the honey oil, liquid butane is mixed with ground up marijuana in a tube.”

Sounds yummy.

“The liquid butane dissolves the tetrahydrocabinol and other ingredients from the marijuana. The person processing the material then pours the butane from the tube into a bowl and allows it to evaporate, leaving behind the marijuana honey oil residue.”

Hum—with its fewer petro-chemical additives, honey oil might be a healthier choice than meth.

With 150 butane containers, a vapor cloud of evaporating butane, and a fire in the fireplace, these master chemists turned their duplex into a ticking time bomb capable of doing grave damage to their child and neighbors.

Yes, they were arrested. Yes, their child was taken away from them. Who knows where they are now—probably back in their duplex in Willits.

So there you have it—Stupid February.

A Boy & His Dogs

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Kate

During the 1999 basketball season, our son Harrison was in seventh grade at Fort Bragg Middle School. He’d been an avid sports fan since the age of three when he learned how to work the television remote control. In those days, neither his dad nor I gave two hoots about sports, but were supportive of most any activity that kept our little guy entertained for longer than a few minutes at a time.

Even though Harrison was only in seventh grade, that college basketball season was pivotal in determining the course of his young life. It was the year the Gonzaga Bulldogs made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA college basketball tournament and earned the label “Cinderella Team.” They virtually came out of nowhere to capture the nation’s attention.

Casey Calvary and Matt Santangelo became familiar names in our home. Gonzaga gear was ordered from the school’s bookstore and Harrison made a solemn vow—when it came time for college, he would go to Gonzaga. He would not consider another school; a school where he couldn’t support their basketball team. And the only team he cared about was Gonzaga.

The population of Fort Bragg, California is about the same size as the entire student population of Gonzaga (7,250 vs. 7,764). Harrison’s peers were fans of such schools as UC Berkeley, Duke, and University of North Carolina. They didn’t care about a puny school in a part of the country they’d never heard of.

By seventh grade Harrison was bitten with Zags Fever, a highly contagious disease that spread throughout the family—even to his 85-year old grandmother. (The only one immune was his younger sister Laine who, from a very early age, inoculated herself against sports-related diseases.)

Gonzaga is located in Spokane, Washington and is where his father and I grew up. Gary was fortunate to go to college there. I had spent a fair share of time hanging around the campus imagining what it would be like to live in the Madonna Hall dorm.

Over thirty years after his parents left Spokane, Harrison was able to realize his dream—not to attend his dad’s alma mater or to live in his parents’ hometown—but to join the school that was the birthplace of his basketball team. He enrolled in Gonzaga in the fall of 2004 and lived in Madonna Hall.

During basketball season, he would text us from the games as we watched on television, giving us coordinates to where he was located in the student section. Gary and I would search the backs of male heads with similar haircuts, spending most of the game saying things like, “Is that him? I think that’s him!” It gave us a thrill. (Remember, we live in a very small town.)

One time, the television camera slowly panned the student section and briefly rested on Harrison. He mouthed, “Hi Mom!” My heart swooned. At that moment, every sacrifice we had made to send him to that school was entirely worth it.

When I picked him up at the Oakland airport for Thanksgiving 2005, one of the first things he said was, “We’ve got to find a TV.” Gonzaga was playing Michigan State in the Maui Invitational and the game would begin within a half hour. I argued that I had already driven four hours to the airport and we had a four-hour drive home, his dad was recording the game, and he could watch it later.

I apparently wasn’t in my right mind.

We found a restaurant in Jack London Square with a semi-secluded banquet area in the back that had a small TV mounted on the wall. Since it was only 5:00, the place was sparsely populated and the waiter graciously allowed Harrison to turn on the game. (The restaurant didn’t have ESPN, only ESPN 2—fortunately, the station the game was on.)

We ordered food and became so engrossed in the game that we barely noticed the restaurant fill to capacity.

As the game went from one to double to triple overtime, our waiter gave up on his customers to watch with us. In a heart-pounding battle to the finish, Gonzaga beat Michigan State in the final seconds 109-106.

I was so happy Harrison had insisted we stay in Oakland to watch the game. Adrenaline fueled our four-hour trip to arrive in Fort Bragg at one in the morning.

When Harrison had the opportunity to study abroad in Florence, Italy his junior year, he nearly didn’t go because he didn’t want to miss the basketball season. He was able to find a contraption called Slingbox that we attached to a cable box on a spare television. In Florence, his computer could access this device and allow him to watch our cable channels. He watched every Zags game that season—even if it meant getting up at three in the morning.

It’s been nearly five years since Harrison graduated from Gonzaga. His Zags Fever rages nearly as strong today as in the past. A couple of seasons previous to this one, while his team suffered some setbacks, he defended the work the coaches were doing to eventually build a great team.

That work has paid off with the Zags earning the #1 spot in the Associated Press and ESPN Coaches Poll. That’s #1 among big schools like Duke, Indiana, and Michigan State. This little school, this little Cinderella team has finally gotten their glass slippers and made it to the ball.

Throughout it all, Harrison never wavered. Gary and I have had our doubts, but continue to watch Gonzaga basketball, sometimes thinking we see the back of our boy’s head in the student section.

Coffee Bliss

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Kate

A few weeks ago, I was swept into an alternate universe while visiting San Francisco. I was with four young people, aged 12-27, had been on the go all day, and knew I’d be expected to stay up past my bedtime. Thus, I was required to break my one latte per day habit and have a late afternoon pick me up.

Our group had just chowed down a dozen French macaroons from Chantal Guillonour in Hayes Valley. It is the best French macaroon bakery on the planet. (Okay, okay, so maybe the best outside of Paris.)

My son Harrison suggested we visit Ritual Coffee located about a block away.

This particular location is an open air coffee stand. It is housed in what looks like a renovated train car, which gives it an industrial, hip, startup kind of vibe. Or—if you’re my age and from Fort Bragg, California—a vibe akin to “I guess they can’t afford rent on a nice place.”

Ritual Coffee Logo

Duck & cover flashback logo

Their logo reminds me of the former Soviet Union’s flag. Growing up in the Cold War era, my young brain was imprinted with the threat of communist takeover. The Ritual Coffee logo gives me disturbing flashbacks to a time of duck and cover drills.

As we stood in line, Harrison explained that Ritual’s claim to fame [aside from the fact that they operate out of train cars and might be communists] is that they individually slow brew each cup of coffee.

There were six people in front of us waiting to be served by two baristas. The young woman took orders and made lattes or cappuccinos, working at the pace of an artist restoring a masterwork of art. The young man carefully poured hot water into cone-shaped filters to ensure each cup of coffee was brewed at the speed of a saline drip through an intravenous therapy tube.

Unlike a shop where baristas seem to dance to the Rolling Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash to get orders out post haste, these baristas swayed to a Mozart flute concerto.

After each customer interaction, the female barista issued a lilting laugh. When the next customer approached, she gave a sweet smile and asked for a moment so she could craft the previous customer’s order.

Instead of growling, “I’ve been standing in this line for half a freaking hour and I want my coffee now!” the customer silently nodded.

As we waited (and waited), the line behind us grew to at least 20 people. The baristas appeared unfazed. The guy smiled peacefully and the gal Glinda-laughed. No one twitched with the caffeine joneses. No one complained. Voices were muted as the baristas drew everyone into their state of serenity.

When it was my turn, I ordered in gentle, hushed tones. When she said it would take just a moment, I understood. It was fine. Everything was fine. The world is a kind, peaceful place and I’m so happy we are all one.

Lattes in hand, our little group sat on benches near the coffee stand and admired the milk-painted hearts atop our drinks. We had places to go and things to see, but chose to leisurely sip our coffee, enchanted by the nirvana that resonated from the train car and held us in its comforting embrace.

Upon my return to reality (Fort Bragg, California), I visited the website of Ritual Coffee to discover:

“Ritual has been a pioneer in this delicious shift in coffee consciousness since we opened our doors on Valencia Street in 2005 and started what some call a coffee revolution in San Francisco. Our goal then–and our goal now–was to craft the very best cup of coffee available anywhere. Period. We’ve learned a lot over the years, but the care and attention we lavish on our process is unchanged, including tasting every coffee several times before it goes out to our coffee bars and into your cup.”

May I be so bold to suggest an edit of this last sentence? It’s a bit disconcerting to know my coffee is tasted not once, but several times before it goes into my cup.

“We don’t do all of this to make coffee more complicated. We do it because pretty much everybody who works here has had a moment where a really, really good cup of coffee changed their lives.”

I want to interview these people. I want to know what their lives were like before they were changed by a really, really good cup of coffee. Were they once, like me, anxious about such things as the continued well-being of themselves and their loved ones, how much longer their 14-year old dog is going to live, and the effects of global warming on the Kardashians?

“And we want to do every single thing we can to create that kind of experience for you, or at the very least, give you a really, really good cup of coffee that makes you feel like your day just took a turn for the better.”

Bingo! I was transformed into a kinder, gentler person for at least an hour while residing in the Ritual Coffee Universe. Did my day get better? It had already been pretty awesome and I’ll be darned if it didn’t maintain a similar course.

“We are endlessly enchanted by the coffees we discover and continually delighted by the experience of sharing them with our customers. And just like with any passionate affair, we find ourselves more in love with coffee today than we were when we started.”

A word of warning Ritual Coffee: passionate affairs can suddenly fizzle and degrade into stalking, nasty text message exchanges, keying of vehicles, and restraining orders.

If you’re ever in San Francisco or Napa, take the time to visit a Ritual Coffee shop. They understand that life’s pleasurable moments are often all too fleeting. You’ll be grateful that they strive to stretch your coffee moment into an experience you won’t soon forget.

It Happened at Purity

Small town adventures on the Mendocino Coast

Monthly Archives: March 2013