June 8, 2008
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The magnificent JBL Wall of Sound, 1974. The Grateful Dead's.
This is the second of the three pictures I didn't take.
Tahoe sunrise
Angora Lake, July 2007
The diving rock, Angora Lake, July 2007. It survived, as did the entire place.
The ride out of Angora Lake saw this tree, half burnt, half not.
The division of what was saved and what was not was that precise.
Looking left on the road to Angora.
The entire area was devastated.The Daily News
Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, February 20081 So...Jim McKay walks into a bar...
2 Well!
3 This is the last week of school, and the last week of the DN until we meet again in August!
4 To many, that's GREAT news, because I won't be annoying them anymore.
5 Anyway I still have a lot of time to screw up the English language, misspell easy words, and lord some realllllly lousy analogies at you.
6 McKay, by the way, was not only the announcer who reported the terrorism that struck the '72 Olympics in Munich, but was also a complete class act, and an amazing commentator. I always enjoyed his coverage of the Winter Olympics. Quite a loss.
The immortal Jim Mckay.
This is the third pic I didn't take.7 Moving on: There's a part of me that really enjoys becoming an old geezer. I took a little time the other day to do weeds, pick the deadheads off my flowers, and just meander quietly around the garden area of Orchard Supply.
8 Doing the garden, digging the weeds. Who could ask for more?
9 I also got an iPod for my birthday, so I could listen to the Grateful Dead while making my yard look pretty.
10 I remember years ago when I directed Thornton Wilder's Our Town, there was a line in which the Stage Manager said that one in ten men think it's a privilege to push their own lawnmower. For some reason, I wasn't sure as to what Wilder was trying to say there.
11 While I was just taking it WAY slow and daydreaming during all of this, I thought about that line, and it made perfect sense.
12 Seeing your housework as a chore that HAS to be done makes you resent anything you do when you could be out at the beach or something.
13 But yesterday I just got this old-geezer inner peace thing goin' on, and the Dead is traditionally a perfect band to listen to when you're working on projects. We listened to lots of the Grateful Dead when we built sets.
14 So in a way, it's still Dead Week in my eyes. All that talk about them put me in the mood for them.
15 Plus on Friday, that dance was going wrong the entire time I was setting it up, and our deadline to open the doors pushed us to the max. In the midst of a lot of stress and insanity I got a text message from my daughter Caitlin.
16 Caitlin was never really too interested in the Dead, just would hear them now and again throughout her life.
17 Anyway, in the midst of all the stress of getting the decorations up and making the dance happen, Caitlin texted me.
18 "Daddy! I am listening to the grateful dead right now. ; ) "
19 I just smiled. I had just finished talking with our new custodian, who was raised in San Francisco and knew Carlos and Jorge Santana. He was sharing some stories about the old days in the Mission District of San Francisco when Caitlin buzzed me with that.
20 I shared that with the guy and we both just laughed. In the middle of all this insanity and madness, the Grateful Dead made one more entrance into Dead Week.
21 Ah, the good ol' Grateful Dead.
22 Okay, so it's three days running. They deserve the time.
23 I remember one time Jerry Garcia likening a Dead concert to a baseball game. Just a place to relax, enjoy some good music, maybe read a book, nap, while the Dead play in the background. But at some point a true fan might find himself waking up, and suddenly realiziing it could get really dramatic any moment. And within seconds, the tension might mount, and the Dead might turn it into a sudden explosion of old tyme Rock 'n' Roll, like Johnny B. Goode, or their awesome One More Saturday Night.
26 The Dead usually get me safely to and from Tahoe each summer as well. I always love playing their music when I'm approaching Echo Summit on Highway 50 because the road moves up a couple of miles and then the second you begin descending, an amazing vista of the Sierra with your first view of the Lake comes dramatically into view.
27 Always a celebration that takes place almost a mile and a half into the sky.
28 Go Johnny go!
29 The ride back, sometimes at night, can be dreadfully scary. There are no lights going down the mountain, with the exception of the lights of the cars coming up the mountain and right into your eyes.
30 Times like that find me holding onto the Dead for dear life. They are so sweet and familiar I know I'll find my way back home.
31 This past summer I heard of the Angora fires, and I was worried about Angora resort, a beautiful little place nestled high in the Sierra, an alpine lake resort that rents boats, has small cabins, and a little store that sells fresh lemonade and sandwiches.
Angora Lake survived the fire. The clear water stood untouched.
As I took these shots I felt I was witnessing a miracle. I didn't know
if this beautiful setting had survived until I got there.
Families enjoying Angora after the devastating fire.
The Angora store survived. It rents boats, makes sandwiches, and
boasts the best lemonade on the planet.32 After I arrived in Tahoe, I finally took a look up there. The road and area on the way to Angora had been devastated by the fire, but the final ride in to the resort had been saved, and the place still lived through it all, in pristine condition.
The road into Angora. Notice the left side is completely burnt,
and the right side untouched. Angora Lake resort survived all of it.
The tree again. This just amazed me. Fire on the Mountain.
About a half mile from the last picture was this entrance to
Angora Lakes. The remainder of the way in looked just like this.33 I drove around and listened to the Grateful Dead's Fire on the Mountain thinking of all the people who had lost houses and pets in that fire, and how amazing the fire department was in it's care for saving so many other homes and pets.
34 I thought of this year's Summit Fire in the Santa Cruz mountains, and again, the Grateful Dead's song reminded me of how fragile everything can be.
35 I could go on, but I won't.
36 The Angora fire came within one mile of where my family stays every year, for years and years. It's our sanctuary. I sometimes refer to it as Mars, because you can't reach any of us there, so we might as well be on Mars. And it's pretty meaningful and significant in my own life. I listen to the Grateful Dead a lot when I'm in Tahoe.
37 So it ain't Dead Week. It would make sense that it would run over a couple of days so let's squeeze in one more tribute.
38 Their songs are intelligent and often funny. Their contributions? Just the other day there was an article in the San Jose Merc talking about how ahead of their time they were when they let everyone plug into their concerts and record them.
39 The business idea was that it would promote them WAY faster than all all the advertising they could do to sell their albums. They were ahead of iPods by years.
40 And what have they done for us lately?
41 They are actively backing Obama for President. Sorry Hillary people, and I'm not that sorry to McCain people, but I'm just reporting the facts here. And already Ben and Jerry's has ice cream called Cherry Garcia. And of course, they have moved into Starbucks as well. And they're STILL together. So far.
42 Ah, anyway there's so much more. All the sets we built, the '93 Giants season (I listened to the Grateful Dead that entire amazing season when the Giants won 103 games and never made it to the playoffs.), and my entire long strange trip of a life.
43 And now my yard looks pretty.
44 That reference, for the layperson, is from arguably their most famous song, called Truckin'. Here is the context:
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me.
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
what a long, strange trip it's been.45 So true. Always works. Any time, any age.
46 The Grateful Dead.
47 Peace.
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