Christmas 2007

Late in October, I wondered aloud over dinner how I should vote on an upcoming ballot initiative in our state that would have taxed cigarettes and spent the money on health insurance for kids. It seemed like a no brainer on the surface, but I worried that such an issue was important enough for everyone to pitch in, not just cigarette smokers. Logan pushed hard for a yes vote. Taxing tobacco would encourage people to stop smoking, he argued, which would be a good thing, in his view. But if that’s true, I said, then the tax receipts would fall and the money would not be there to fund the program.
“Nope, that won’t happen,” Graham said. “Demand for cigarettes is inelastic.” Logan and I just looked at him. If we didn’t let out a collective “huh?” our blank stares said enough.
“Demand for many things is elastic,” Graham continued. “If prices go up, people decide not to buy them; demand goes down. The demand is elastic.” I think Logan and I were still staring, so Graham jumped up and returned with a pencil and paper. He drew a large X on the paper, and began with the lower left corner of the X, following the line up and to the right. “If this line is price,” he said, “this other line is demand.” He tracked the lines, showing how as prices go up, demand goes down at the same rate. “But with cigarettes,” he continued, drawing a new diagram, beginning with the first line heading up and right, “as price goes up, demand stays about the same.” Instead of completing the X, he drew a nearly level line that started on the left, continued right, but just barely sloped down. Retracing this line, he said, “Cigarettes are addictive, so as price goes up, demand doesn’t fall off. People might forego other items, but they will still buy cigarettes. He continued the trajectory of both lines, showing how as cigarette prices grew higher and higher, the demand line, running nearly level, stayed relatively high. Satisfied that Logan and I finally got it, he put down his pencil and returned to his dinner, concluding, “Demand for cigarettes is inelastic.”
“Where did you learn this?” I wondered.
“Economics,” Graham said.
These conversations are becoming so common around our house these days they hardly bear mentioning, except by way of noting the beautiful transition from a boy to a man that occurs with breathtaking speed. It’s easy for friends and relatives who don’t see growing children on a daily basis to comment on how big they’ve become since the last visit. I do it myself all the time with my nephews or small niece, or the children of friends. It’s harder to notice, at least on first blush, how smart they become at the same time. Somehow, I find it all the more miraculous to think about the information they take in and process on their journey to adulthood. I leafed through Graham’s textbooks the other day while he was at swimming practice: economics, calculus, chemistry, American history; his copy of Steinbeck’s East of Eden for English. I wondered if any of the parade of talking heads who seem to constantly find fault with public schools could do this work for a week, plus the pool time (or the cross country workouts of the autumn). At least it would make them realize how easy their jobs are.
We ended last year as we end this one; Logan in middle school, Graham on the Phoenix High School swimming team. But this winter we have another set of practices and games to attend, as Logan joined the Talent Middle School basketball team. He also ran cross country in the fall, and Logan is planning a track season in the spring, after wrestling in January. That makes him a four-sport athlete, which hardly leaves time for his piano lessons. Graham finished his swimming season in February with improved times and skills, and the Phoenix High Pirates astounded all us fans when the boys and girls varsity swimming squads earned a special award for having the highest combined GPA in the state.
We spent the winter skiing Mt. Ashland and Mt. Bachelor, then departed on the first day of spring for Spain. We met friends there, Javier and Dawn del Rio, during the year they spent in La Mancha. Javier taught both Graham and Logan at Talent Elementary, and on this trip, both Graham and Logan attended a day or two of school, where they found their dual language experience at Talent had provided them with passable Spanish. Later, we met the del Rios on the Costa Sol at a rented a vacation home; Javi’s parents were there, and speak no English. Graham was able to jump into the conversation and I’ll never forget the body language of Javi’s dad when he realized a student of his own son from the US could really speak Spanish. He and Graham embarked on a long conversation about soccer, as we had just seen a game between Spain and Denmark in Madrid. (Logan cheered for Denmark). A few days before, we marked the fourth anniversary of Lisa’s death with our first swim in the Mediterranean. Well, actually, Logan swam. Graham and I sort of hung out on the beach.
But the real wonder of the trip was how well Graham and Logan traveled; they travel well anyway, but on this trip they we’re fascinated by the architecture, food, culture and museums. Before the trip, Logan had completed a research assignment on Picasso, and we spent much of the trip chasing down museums and references to the master. (Logan prefers Picasso’s Blue Period.) Graham lectured me on the War of Spanish Succession, which he’d been studying in Euro History. In Granada, after a long day touring the Al Hambra, sitting at a cafe at midnight on a weeknight, having our late meal of the day, (when in Rome), Graham got it. He looked around the crowded café and said, “I should come here for a year or two after high school, hang out, get to know the country.”
We returned from Spain and I toiled for four whole days, then took off (barely over my jet lag) for a six-day guys’ trip to southern Utah. I flew our Cessna 340 to Livermore and picked up Scott Lambert, and we took our mountain bikes and a stupid amount of gear and flew into St. George, Utah, for a couple days (polygamists at the thrift store!) mountain biking and touring Zion, then on to Bryce Canyon and then Moab. We holed up at the Gonzo Inn in Moab, mountain biking in Canyonlands (desert bighorns!) and Arches, then knocked off the Slickrock Trail in 2.5 hours. (That’s a good time for anyone, let alone a geezer.) We made a quick drive to Grand Junction, Colorado, to see John Prine, so the score was four national parks and one national treasure.
Logan spent a week at an academic camp at the university in Ashland, and Graham spent a week at the high country running camp in the Steens Mountains for the second year. My mom and sister Sheryl and her family came out to see us over the 4th of July, and we all traveled to the Bay Area and did some sailing and sightseeing in San Francisco.
Then, it was back to school; both boys ran cross country in the fall, and Graham’s team did well enough to earn a berth at the state championships, so he was able to add a fat state meet patch to his letterman’s jacket. They are counting down the days to winter break, and we are all watching the weather and checking the ski report daily.
Our best to you and yours for the new year. Love, Los Tres Thirkillos

I’d learned to sail as a kid; my dad had a small sailboat and we sailed it to Catalina in the summers and around Long Beach harbor. I’d always wanted to cruise but life, college, marriage, kids and a career conspired to prevent that from happening. I bought a Catalina 25 in 1999 and sailed it in summers on a reservoir in the Southern Oregon Cascades. I’d trailered it out to the coast and sailed from Crescent City to Brookings and back, and trailered down to San Francisco and sailed the Bay, and I’d hauled it down to Channel Islands Harbor and sailed out to Catalina and Long Beach. I had been researching cruising sailboats for a few years when I became a widowed, single dad in 2003. I decided it was time for a long voyage with my two boys, so with that in mind, I bought Quest, a Golden Wave 42, after finding her on the City Yachts dock at the San Francisco Marina. At the time, the name was perfect; I was on a Quest to live a new life as a voyaging single dad. Not surprisingly, my boys didn’t think much of my idea to sail away on a quest on Quest, so we compromised. I sailed her to Brookings with a couple buddies and kept her there for a few seasons. There’s not much to do on the Oregon Coast, so a friend and my oldest son sailed her back to San Francisco Bay, where we used her as a second home, exploring various marinas on long weekends, voyaging as far as Half Moon Bay. Our time on Quest was, shall we say, utterly adequate. I spent one spring break replacing the head, and that didn’t feel like much of a Quest. But it was adequate.

One warm summer evening, my youngest son’s piano teacher, Cybele Abbett, called, saying he had told her about our time sailing. She said she’d always wanted to learn to sail and she wondered if I knew anyone who could teach her. Tomorrow is the 11th anniversary of our second day sailing the Catalina 25 on our local mountain lake; we married last October. In the interim, we sailed south on the Baja Haha in 2014 and during our time in Mexico, the name Quest became irrelevant. Neither of us was on a Quest. We were happy together and in love and living a life we had created together, cruising a beautiful sailboat in Mexico. The old name represented a different time, a different place, a different mindset. It was the past, and we were looking to the future. We began casting about for a new name. One morning at anchor I was in the cockpit listening to the Grateful Dead (okay, it was a morning like every other morning) and Eyes of the World, with Branford Marsalis on soprano sax, came up. It was so beautiful and Cybele popped up in the companionway and said, “Hey, how about Eyes of the World?” I loved the idea. We love travel and we can’t wait for new destinations and vistas. Eyes of the World. But after rolling it around a bit, we decided it was a bit of a mouthful to say on the radio. A few days later, we heard a boat hail, “Eyes of the World, Eyes of the World, this is Distant Drum.” Given there was already an Eyes of the World, and it was a mouthful on the radio, we kept casting. During the same concert, Bird Song came up, a lovely eulogy to Janis Joplin. Cybele and I are both musicians, so the Hunter/Garcia tribute to Janis was particularly sweet. We are birders, too, and much of our time is spent watching birds, listening for birds and identifying birds. At some juncture, that all came together. Bird Song. Or Birdsong? We settled for BirdSong.