Tonight we celebrated a Very Important Milestone: the successful passage of the California Bar Exam. Yep, my beloved wife, who has labored and struggled for weeks and months towards the goal of conquering one of the toughest, if not the toughest, bar exams in the nation received word the other day that she’s now officially eligible to be the butt of lawyer jokes (Quick! Heard any good ones lately??).

As an extremely proud spouse, I escorted her to a celebratory dinner at Trader Vic’s, advertised as the “home of the Mai Tai.” Yes, we had the obligatory mai tais, along with appetizers, dinner, and dessert. I chose the restaurant because it is just down the street from our humble abode, and we have passed by it countless times. Well, now the mystery of what’s behind those Polynesian-themed walls is over.

While I’m still figuring out what I want to be When I Grow Up (yeah, I’m a writer, but I need a day job til I become the next Dan Brown), at least one person in our household is an adult, and about to re-join the working world. Congratulations, dear, on a job well done.

When it comes to current affairs, I consider myself fairly well-read. Maybe not as obsessive as some, and I certainly don’t do this for a living (although anyone reading this that wants to pay me for reading and analyzing stuff online, give me a call), but I do keep up with events as they happen and try to read a broad range of materials.

That said, I’m not a fan of Republicans, conservatives, or right-wingers, and I tend to avoid their pieces, blogs, and venues for the most part. But I do check in from time to time, just to get a sense of what the other side is thinking, or to take their pulse on a particular issue. This includes occasionally sneaking over the fence into Free Republic, or checking out an esoteric blog here and there. When it comes to “mainstream” publications, such as Time or Newsweek, I read some columnists who span the entire range of the political spectrum (why is it that nearly every conservative writer out there is an aging white male? Oh, wait a minute– I *am* an aging white male!). One such columnist I read every now and then is George Will.

Generally, Will and I do not see eye to eye on a lot of issues, but he wrote a column last week that I thought was particularly good. In “Who Isn’t a ‘Values Voter’?,” Will chides conservatives and the Corporate Media for reserving the label “values voter” and “values voting” for certain issues “owned” by social conservatives. As Will points out, it “is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values…” Funny, that. Each time I write my opinion up in this blog, or dash off a letter to the editor, or carefully choose a candidate to vote for, I thought I was assessing my values and demonstrating my support of those values. My values (and the principles behind them) reflect my beliefs and my emotional and ethical commitment to issues and concerns in society that I’m involved in. But according to social conservatives and their media lapdogs, I apparently don’t have any opinions, principles, or any kind of investment in the workings of our society.

When I argue for universal healthcare or healthcare reform in general, that’s a value. When I disagree with capital gains tax cuts and corporate welfare, that’s a value. When I advocate for deaf rights, that’s a value. My casting a ballot in favor of these issues is just as much “values voting” as the social conservative who heads to the polls to formalize their opinions on religion, homosexuality, marriage, and abortion. Just because my neighbors and fellow citizens may disagree with me doesn’t give them the corner on being “holier than thou;” as Will states, “The phrase “values voters”… subtracts from social comity by suggesting that one group has cornered the market on moral seriousness,” and a complicit Corporate Media “are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.”

I agree- I remember reading something somewhere about casting stones at glass houses. So-called “values voters” should think twice about using labels to put themselves on a pedestal, and the Corporate Media should also follow suit by not taking the lazy way out and stereotyping or labeling various groups based solely on a certain set of ethics and beliefs, and thus suggesting no one else has values.

Last night I attended a dear friend’s birthday party; I was looking forward to it, not only because it was an opportunity to celebrate my friend’s birthday, but it was also going to be great to see some other friends again as well. The organizer, my friend’s husband, chose a bar based on internet buzz. Only one or two in the group of attendees had ever been there, though I didn’t know that at the time.

I was the first to arrive, and found it to be a fairly small bar, and very, very dark. After unsuccessfully finding anyone there, I staggered back out, thinking, “Jeez, what a dark bar. I wonder if T realizes it’s going to be damn hard to sign in there??” Soon the birthday girl and her hubby appeared, and I relayed to them the bar’s atmosphere. We entered and found it comfortable, if very dark.

But what happened next was a pleasant surprise. As we seated ourselves and saw the waitress approach to take our orders, we grabbed the drink list like good little deafies, ready to point and gesture in order to make our wishes known. But then, the waitress *signed*.

Yep, she not only signed, it wasn’t the usual “Oh, H-I! I know A-B-C…” No, it was a smooth full sentence– “HI! What you want drink?” *thud* (jaw dropping to the floor) Turns out she’s an interpreter (or aspiring interpreter?). She’d taken courses at Golden West and Pierce College, and even better, had pretty good receptive skills. We were of course delighted. Soon that astonishment turned to even more good fortune: the waitress was soon joined by one of the bartenders, who also signed. Not one, but two people in the same business could communicate with us, sans paper, pen, or pointed fingers!

Needless to say, we all enjoyed interacting with the waitress, and informing partygoers who joined us through the evening of our communication access. Naturally we left a good tip, and discussed possibly getting together again at the same establishment on a regular basis. I don’t know if that’ll happen– I hope it does. But all I could say at the end of the evening other than what a wonderful party it was, and three cheers for the birthday gal, was to add cheers for communication. Just wish this was more the norm than the rare exception!

Nothing lasts forever, not even the earth. Our planet is shaped by elemental forces: wind, water, fire. Islands emerge, mountains erode, rivers change course. So why should we expect the every day realities of our lives to remain the same? Some of us welcome change; others don’t handle it very well (my mother’s in this latter category!). I am usually pragmatic about changes in our society, perhaps because as a historian, I’m all too aware of how ephemeral our institutions and traditions can be. Still, quite a few things have happened lately that I’ve taken notice of.

The first is the recent death earlier this month of the last U.S. survivor of the Titanic, Lillian Asplund. She was the last survivor who could clearly remember what happened that fateful night in April of 1912. This is in contrast to last month’s celebration/remembrance of the San Francisco Earthquake (for a great first-person account of the 100th anniversary, by a deaf non-1906 survivor, see here). Granted, the earthquake affected a large area and consequently there are/were more survivors, but it’s still a marker of human memory when all living survivors of a historical event have passed. That’s not to say that the Titanic is now a remote historical footnote: in recent years we’ve had tons of movies, commemorations, books, and the like about the ship. In fact, the day the article came out, I was watching a TV show on A&E or PBS or something similar about some DNA researchers trying to determine the identity of Titanic victims buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Kind of a spooky coincidence… The program, by the by, detailed the attempt to determine the identity of three victims, but ultimately succeeded with only one: the famed “Unknown Child,” which turned out to be a one-year-old Finnish baby.

Anyway, as I was saying, it isn’t a remote memory, not by far: anyone who lives in the U.S. or taken a U.S. History survey knows just how “recent” the Civil War is in our collective memories. There are re-enactments all the time all over the Southeast and in the Mid-Atlantic region, there are historical groups (this link is actually a good one; it’s disgusting how developers are choosing greed over history) and commemorative groups, and people all over the South with Confederate flags on their cars and pickups. Yet all the soldiers have been dead for quite some time, and there is no one now living who can actually remember the years 1861-65. Yet it’s recent enough that while it isn’t living memory, it’s certainly living history. For example, I knew my uncle while he was alive, and he told me when I was a little boy about listening to *his* grandfather’s friend recount tales of being a drummer boy in the Civil War. So while neither my uncle nor I were alive in the mid-19th century, the Civil War wasn’t some abstract event for us.

While I don’t see people re-enacting the sinking of the Titanic anytime soon, there are enthusiasts, writers, and all sorts of groups out there that collect artifacts, write books and articles, conduct DNA searches (as I detailed above!), and hold meetings, build models, and publish newsletters that exhaustively detail and analyze every possible fact that can be found about the sinking of a superliner more than 90 years ago.

Some soon-to-be aspects of history aren’t as widely known. Some center around local institutions, in the case of another upcoming departure from this earth. In this case, it’s Cody’s Books in Berkeley; the flagship store on Telegraph Avenue just south of Cal (UC Berkeley for you non-locals) is due to close its doors forever two months from now. This saddens me, because I’m a bibliophile, and I’ve always enjoyed independent bookstores, whether they sell recent and current works or they barter in used books. Telegraph has long been a haunt of mine when I was in Berkeley for that very reason: within a couple of blocks, you had Cody’s, Moe’s and Shakespeare & Co. I could (and have) spent an entire afternoon just wandering in and out of these three bookstores, and others as well. Independent bookstores are a dying breed in a lot of places. So what’s so important about Cody’s?

Well, to put it into perspective, Cody’s is to Berkeley what Powell’s is to Portland, Oregon, and Dutton’s is to Brentwood, here in Los Angeles. Although it’s primarily a used bookstore, The Strand in NYC is a similarly hallowed institution. While anyone can go to Borders (and yes, I do go there) or Barnes & Noble, it’s just not the same. You have people in Borders and its ilk who simply work there because it’s a paycheck. It’s not the same at places like Cody’s, where the owners, the clerks, and the staff actually read the books, can help you locate titles or find similar works, and don’t neccessarily have to rely on a computer to do so. Sure, you don’t get cut-rate prices, but then again, it isn’t always about price. Sometimes it’s about pride in the business, knowledge in its products, and a unique identity that you can’t find elsewhere. I doubt I’ll be able to make it up to Berkeley before July, and I’m not sure I’d want to– wakes are fine, but not when you enter a bookstore only to see the best materials already taken, and remnants strewn all over. I’ll mourn Cody’s, and continue to do my best to patronize independent stores of all kinds (not just books!) when possible. I can get the cookie-cutter experience anytime, anyplace– it’s the local restaurants, shops, and bookstores that define a city or town.

Finally, the iconic Phillips 76 ball (yes, *that* orange ball with the blue 76 in the center!) is going the way of the dinosaurs. ConocoPhillips, 76’s parent company, is replacing the familiar orange globe with flat signs of the type you find at gas stations everywhere in America. While I am not loyal to any one brand (I’ve always been loyal to price more than brand, especially now that companies are being concentrated more and more into conglomerates composed of many companies), I frequented 76 in my early days of driving, simply because my parents also patronized 76 (it’s kind of like how if your parents use Colgate or Crest when you’re growing up, you’re more likely to use it when you’re an adult as well). It didn’t hurt that the 76 in the town I grew up in in rural Northern California was one of the very few left that actually provided full service, where an employee would come over and fill up your tank, check the air and water, and wash your windows (of course, this meant a higher price paid overall, which had dissuaded me from going to full service all the time). While they didn’t wear sparkly bright uniforms with caps and bowties, it was still nice to have the kind of service that disappeared 40 years ago.

I also enjoyed seeing the familiar ball during the day, standing out among the flat signs for all the other gas stations. This was especially true at night, when it would glow up, a bright orange beacon in the night sky. Those little antenna balls were great too– now that I think about it, I should stop by the 76 down on the corner and see if they have one or know where I can get one. Not all the balls are down yet; if you care at all about keeping this particular icon of advertising history alive, check out this website, Save the 76 Ball, where you can also sign a petition. While I’m not a fan of petitions (they aren’t always all that effective), I’ve signed it.

As time passes, we’ll see more and more departures: WWI veterans are few and far between; soon it’ll be our grandparents who survived the Depression and WWII, and then succeeding generations. As our society morphs more and more into an indistinguishable homogenized version of Anywhere, U.S.A., you’ll see further sterilization of our culture and society, as more Cody’s and more 76’s die off, and become one blended bland version of modern life. Adieu to our past, and adieu to history.