Smart Car Test Drive!

Smart Car Test Drive!
Click for Robin's review of this little dandy.

Robin in Television News

Robin in Television News
A trip to Bahrain at the end of the Gulf War was one of her assignments. Those characters were the secret police assigned to keep their eye on her. Fascinating place, the Middle East. Click for more on Robin's years in television.

Liz Taylor's Legacy

Liz Taylor's Legacy
Click for Robin's piece on the best and the worst of Taylor's life in film.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Romance and Mystery for the New Year

Want to stay home with that new flat screen on the first few evenings of the New Year? Here are a few of my favorite classic films of romance and mystery to enjoy.




1.The Quiet Man (1952) American fighter Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to Ireland, where his mother was born, to forget his past. He falls in love with a local beauty (Maureen O’Hara) and must fight her brother for her dowry, the one thing he does not want to do. Boasts the sexiest scene on screen: John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara kissing during a rainstorm.

2.Designing Woman (1957) A sportswriter (Gregory Peck) and a fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) meet on vacation and elope. When they return to New York to start their lives they discover they have practically nothing in common. This is a very funny, undiscovered gem that contains one of the best fight scenes ever filmed, in which one of Bacall’s male dancer friends (whom the sportswriter thinks is gay) defeats the bad guys with a few high kicks.

3.Letter to Three Wives (1949) As three married women (Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, and Linda Darnell) board a ferry for an all-day charity event, they get a letter from the town vamp telling them she has run off with one of their husbands. But which one? Writer/director Joe Mankiewicz at his very best.

4.The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) The son of a famous movie producer uses his friends and his lovers to get back on top. With Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan,Walter Pidgeon and Gilbert Roland, a bittersweet look at innocence and the irresistible pull of success. The producer's advice to his star? "Love is for the very young."

5. The Lost Weekend (1945) This may make you put down your glass on New Year’s Eve. Ray Milland in his Oscar-winning role as a young man with “promise” who hides in a bottle. Lots of interesting things here: Jane Wyman looking really beautiful during the time she was Mrs. Ronald Regan, and actor Phillip Terry while he was (briefly) Mr. Joan Crawford. Howard da Silva as the memorable bartender.

6.The Awful Truth (1937) A couple of very beautiful people (Cary Grant and Irene Dunn) suspect each other’s infidelities and file for divorce. Ah but chaos ensues and you know you are in for a good time when Ralph Bellamy shows up. Back when Cary Grant was a very funny man, before he became frozen in our minds as a beautiful icon.

7.Rebecca (1940) An inexperienced girl (Joan Fontaine) marries a handsome widower (Laurence Olivier) and discovers he has a dark secret. A haunting film that is not much seen anymore but is nice and creepy in the best possible way.

8.The Spiral Staircase (1945) A big Victorian house, a crazy old lady upstairs, a mute (but beautiful) housemaid, a drunk cook, a very large thunderstorm, and a serial killer in the neighborhood. What more could a mystery-lover want? A terrific cast including Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Elsa Lancaster, and Rhonda Flemming.

9.Mildred Pierce (1945) The best noir going. Joan Crawford as a humble housewife (okay, suspend your disbelief here) who rises to riches and fame with her—are you ready for this—diner! Along the way she changes into her shoulder pads, raises a really scary daughter (Ann Blyth) and learns that money and a diner won’t buy you love.

10. Moonstruck (1987) Just so you won’t think I like only films that
are older than I am. If you are looking for laughter and romance, not to mention now-especially-poignant shots of the skyline of Manhattan before 9/11, this lovely little film has everything. Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello and a lot of memorable lines: “Do you love him Loretta?” “Look, its
Cosmos’ moon!” “Snap out of it!” “I’m so confused!”

Happy New Year!

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Snowy Letter(s) From Oregon


(Robin's note: I worked in Oregon for six years of my television career and during that time got to know the Oregon branch of my family, the Petersons. What did I do when the weirdos followed me home? Went to the Petersons' for safety. Where did I go on Thanksgiving and Christmas? To the Petersons' of course. The Petersons take in us all without judgment. I even introduced my friend Ray to my cousin Beth and he went and married her and now is, annoyingly, a member of my family! This Christmas the Petersons have been divided by the snowstorm: those in Portland can't get to Devil's Lake for the big Christmas, and those in Devil's Lake can't get to Portland. So they hunker down. Here's a guest blog, first from cousin Markie in Portland, and then from my (adopted) cousin Ray in Lincoln City.)


Christmas with the Petersons in Portland, about 1.5 million years ago. My grandmother is to my left--looking young in her seventies--and from left to right, Charlotte, Sally, and Beth Peterson.

From Markie in Portland:

Hi Robin, I'm sitting here looking out at what is proving to be the 'record snowfall in Portland history' and although it is beautiful it has certainly hampered many a Christmas plan. Travel has been snarled and at times non existent at the airport, bus terminal, train station and highways. The malls and local stores go through spurts of sales when drivers can get out to shop - maybe that will teach all of us not to wait until the last minute!

Most of the Peterson family has arrived in Oregon but to different locations and due to the weather and road conditions we will not be able to all get together for Christmas day but that's ok and a new adventure. It tends to bring out the best or the worst in all of us.

Beth, Ray and family arrived from California on Sunday via Highway 101 to Lincoln City and are with Mom and Dad. Tim and Betty Ann arrived from Anchorage on Monday night at midnight to my house on the east side of Portland and near the airport. Their luggage wasn't certain it wanted to come from the land of the Midnight Sun to the land of "Snowzilla" but eventually did arrive 12 hours later. Ken and family are holed up in Scappoose with what was to be our Christmas dinner. Brian is in Salem. Charlotte, Bruce and Barb are all on the Westside of Portland and Sally is on the coast close to mom and dad. Tom may be the only smart one by making the decision to stay in Hawaii and wish us Mele Kalikimaka via AT&T. (Robin's note:I guess I should interject here that the Peterson cousins are ten, including two sets of twins, all children of my mother's sister, her genetic opposite!)

We, like many Oregonians are separated by less than 80 miles but are experiencing what many Mid-Westerners and East Coasters must feel at this time of year when the weather conditions make getting together difficult or impossible - but for us this is a new adventure and one that we haven't experienced before - Christmas rain never made getting together this difficult!

We'll make alternate plans, figure out ways to 'beat Mother Nature', give a lot of money to At&T, Verizon and T-Mobile but we'll get through this 'record snowfall' and happily enjoy the sights, sounds and yes, snow of this wonderful season.


Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year with all that it will bring.

Martha

From Ray in Lincoln City/Devil's Lake (Robin's Note: Ray is a sportswriter so his prose must be viewed through that perculiar lens.)

Here in the badlands of the Oregon Coast, where the heat at the Safeway is intermittent and there is only one Starbucks, we are the only part of the state that isn't snowlocked.

We live vicariously through the relentless traffic and weather reports ("Nobody's moving and the weather sucks for the fifth day in a row; here's some of the same B-roll you saw an hour ago") and we await the next truck that falls off the road.

The rest of our family is in the belly of the beast, and with the east-west highways closed, our Christmas has been bifurcated into Peterson West and Peterson East. On the other hand, there is food and wine and presents and televised football, basketball and hockey, plus a one-screen theatre called (of course) the Bijou, and a six-lane bowling alley and an indoor batting cage and miniature golf course and an outlet mall, so what need have we for mundane things like family?

Of course we kid here -- we would trade the Emerald Bowl for two more Petersons and a Macey. Beyond that, though, we're not so sure. Then again, the holiday is what you make it, so we intend to be happy even if we're half as happy as we could be.

(Robin's note: What is that Emerald Bowl anyway, something to do with jewelry? Sounds great! Merry Christmat!)


(Robin's final note: My friend, Ray and my cousin Beth back when they met and before I had the chance to warn her about him. Now its too late. They have children!)
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Friday, December 12, 2008

Tribute to Van Johnson


In the next few days you'll be reading a lot of tributes to Van Johnson, who died December 12, at the age of 92. He was one of the best actors who arrived in the generation that followed Spencer Tracy and John Barrymore at MGM.

In my mind I see him at his best in three films in which he is cast against type: his type being the gosh-darn boy next door with the freckles and strawberry blonde hair.

I can watch him again and again as the soldier Holly in BATTLEGROUND (1949), the William Wellman directed movie about the Battle of the Bulge in which he jitterbugs one night with a French girl in the doomed village of Bastogne, saves the lives of the men in his unit on another, and spends the entire battle trying to cook eggs in his helmet liner and never quite succeeds. Holly. He stands for all the average men we loved who fought against terrible odds in the last freezing battle on the German front in WW II.

Then, I see him as the perpetually troubled Lt. Maryk, the conscience of the throughtful movie THE CAINE MUTINY (1954), in which we learn a little something about leadership. It is true the great scene stealer Humprey Bogart, rolling those ball bearings around and around in his hand as he twists his lip telling the tale of how he's been betrayed over those strawberries, is tough competition. But the movie belongs to Van Johnson and his conscience, listening to all sides, pondering what is right to do when his ship is in danger in a typhoon. The scar Johnson got on his face in that terrible accident during the filming of A GUY NAMED JOE adds character to a face that might have otherwise been just too pretty for a part such as this one.

And then I see him as the tortured writer in the LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954), in which he can't quite seem to get his life together with the gorgeous and equally troubled Elizabeth Taylor. This role is probably one that might have been cast for Montgomery Clift or James Dean or Marlon Brando, but truth be told Johnson was their equal and then some. When he sits in the Paris bar looking back at his wasted life in France there is much on his face that makes us believe it had happened just as he recalled.

There has always been much talk about his beginnings as a chorus boy. If you look carefully in the party scene in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS you can see him twirling about in all his chorus boy glory. Stories also circulate about his interest in the boys who plied his old profession. Well there you are. It was Hollywood, not the Church of the Nazarene.

But go back and look at some of his best films and see if you can resist his smile. I never could, and who would want to?
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Friday, December 5, 2008

Cycling the Left Coast of my Mind: Notes from California


I love coming back to my California home town and biking around on my Mom's old English three-speed Raleigh. It is getting here by air that is the problem.

Air travel is so dreary these days I won’t even be able to double you over with laughter when I tell you about the travails of flying from Orlando to San Jose via Atlanta this week. Unlike the CEOs of the Big Three Automakers, I live my life without my own personal fleet of jets. And, in an effort at economy (so I’ll be able to continue to afford Marc Jacobs handbags) I got myself a super discount seat in coach, flying between Thanksgiving and Christmas on travel days no one else wanted.

Nowadays the coach seats have become so small and the passengers have become so fat, I have begun to understand why the airlines have decided to charge extra for luggage. The weight allotment of years past for passenger + suitcase is now being more than taken up by the gross weight of just one average passenger. Everybody in coach on my flight weighed at least two hundred pounds, and those were the slender people. The woman next to me was a really pretty young lady who weighed at least three hundred pounds. Her left elbow, when her arms were nestled snuggly on her abdomen, hit me about mid bosom and I spent most of the flight trying to sit on my left hip to avoid the unwanted intimacy.

I did have a friend waiting for me in San Jose, but the airport is so torn-up she had to circle several times before she could figure out how to reach Passenger Pick Up. Then, headed out of the airport, we accidentally got on the freeway headed to Los Angeles, not Los Altos. No matter. We managed to exit on another freeway loop, also under construction like everything else in California, and I dragged myself into the folks’ house at 11:10 p.m.

My father had been asking my mother about seventeen times every day for a month when I was arriving. And when I walked into his bedroom he was awake, but he stared at me for about five seconds before he smiled, threw his hands in air and said “Robin’s here! Hooray!” That was definitely worth traveling three thousand miles on Fat People Airlines to hear. By the next day my father’s muddled mind had transformed our reunion, and he was telling people a different story altogether about our meeting. He said he had been traveling on a bus and couldn’t believe he ran into his daughter Robin on the very same public transport.

“And then,” he told our friends, “I discovered my wife was on the bus too. It was amazing.” My Mother just rolled her eyes, but I’m always fascinated to learn what his brain does with these events. I think when they happen at night, they are especially confusing because he gets them mixed up with his dreams. While he waited for me Wednesday night he dozed and dreamed there had been a big air accident, and when I arrived he asked me how I had managed to get to Los Altos safely without getting involved in the “disaster.”

I thought for a second he had read my mind and agreed that being forced to sit for five hours with all those Plus Size and Big and Tall Fashions was somewhat of a disaster. But it was not the kind that had troubled my father. So he was relieved.

The next morning, since I was visiting, he was convinced it was his birthday, though his actual birthday is still ten days away. He’ll be 89 years old and that is also something that is a little vague in his mind.

“I’m 90 years old today,” he said that first morning. Looking at his usual bowl of Cheerios he said: “I think I deserve a better breakfast than this!” He wanted me to take him for pancakes, which I often do when I visit—but my sister is coming and the two of us are going to take him in a few days. Since he is completely deaf it is sometimes hard to make complex points such as: Not your birthday. No pancakes today. Sis and I will take you in two days. Mom took over and wrote him a note telling him that it was NOT his birthday.

But throughout the day he continued to think it was. Mom likes to go to the commissary at Moffett Field when I visit, so she can get those cut-rate groceries, and my father as a retired officer is eligible for this. I play the role of chauffeur. When Dad saw we were headed to Moffett Field he thought we were going to take him to the Officer’s Club for a birthday party, and later he said he had been practicing the speech he would give. When we parked the car he looked at me and said “I don’t think this is the right hat.” I didn’t know what he meant until he told me later he thought it would be a military party for him and his ball cap wouldn’t be right what with all the military headgear that would be on display. He’s forgotten that Moffett is no longer a Navy base and the Officer’s Club there is defunct. Not to mention it wasn’t his birthday and even if it were we weren’t planning a big military ho-down in his honor. The good news is that he was relieved when he found he didn’t have to give that speech.

California is a land all its own. When I ride my mom’s old bicycle to the coffee shop at the Rancho Shopping Center so I can use the Internet there, people always comment on the bike. It is a vintage English Raleigh (a garage sale find I am sure) and it looks quaint next to all the fancy California bikes ridden by gaggles of cycling club members. Once on a visit I told my parents I was arrested and charged by the police with Not Wearing a Complete Outfit While Cycling, and it took them a while to tell I was joking.

Today at the Los Altos Bakery (“Free WiFi!”) two fit-looking gray-haired sinewy gents in cycling gear chatted me up about the Raleigh bicycle. The guys were so muscular and trim, so California Silicon Valley, I wanted to think it was me they found attractive. But it might have been my Raleigh. Even sex appeal is different in California.
Mom and Dad on their matching Raleighs in better days.

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Best Offbeat Christmas Classic Films




1. The Thin Man (1934): Wealthy Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) check into their favorite Manhattan hotel for the Christmas holidays, only to have a murder mystery interrupt their drinking. Based on a story by the great Dashiell Hammett.

2. The Shop Around the Corner (1940): A sweet and gentle movie starring Jimmy Stewart and fragile Margaret Sullavan, it takes place in a world that never was of magical Budapest before World War II. A love story in which all is revealed on Christmas Eve.

3. Beyond Tomorrow (1940): Sometimes called Beyond Christmas. Three lonely, rich, old men toss three wallets full of money out the window of their Park Avenue brownstone on Christmas Eve, betting nobody will be honest enough to return them. Instead they bring together two impoverished young people who fall in love. Little seen and lots of fun. Starring Richard Carlson and Jean Parker with C. Aubrey Smith as one of the gents.

4. O. Henry's Full House (1952): John Steinbeck introduces five O. Henry short stories. The best is the last, based on the "Gift of the Magi," in which Jeanne Craine and Farley Granger play a young couple, each of whom gives up his most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other.

5. The Apartment (1960): An ambitious junior executive (Jack Lemmon) loans out his apartment to his philandering bosses, only to discover that one of them is after a girl he really likes (a gorgeous young Shirley MacLaine). He cares for her at his apartment over Christmas weekend as she is recovering from what she thinks is a broken heart. Love triumphs by New Years' Eve.

6. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941): During the Christmas holidays a small town family is forced to host obnoxious New Yorker Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Wolley) and his secretary (Bette Davis) when he comes to town on a speaking tour and breaks his leg. This is a very funny movie and if you are sad this Christmas you'll feel better knowing Whiteside didn't come to stay with you.

7. Battleground (1949): The mostly true story of what Christmas was like for Americans soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Van Johnson stars in a movie that showcases the humor, boredom and confusion of war as well as its dangers. Directed by Oscar winner William Wellman, himself a decorated veteran.

8. Stalag 17 (1953): Not exactly a Christmas weepy, but the story does hinge on a load of ping pong balls mistakenly sent by the Red Cross to some hungry Americans in a World War II German prison camp at Christmas time. William Holden won an Oscar for his performance as the cynical American prisoner with the heart of gold.

9.Three Godfathers (1948): John Wayne leads three bandits as they flee across the desert. Crafty old Irishman, director John Ford, has the men redeemed by a baby as they follow a star to a town called New Jerusalem. All that thirst in the desert is bound to make the eggnog look especially good.

10. White Christmas (1954): Not offbeat, I know but so incredibly 1950s. Worth seeing for songstress Rosemary Clooney in her prime (aunt of George), not to mention Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye (who doesn't completely overact, for once) and Vera Ellen, the woman with the smallest waist ever seen on film. It is corny but irresistible.
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Friday, November 21, 2008

Sweet Potato Casserole from the 1950s


I saw this in a small advertiser last year and had a real success with it on New Year's Eve. Since you know I'm challenged in the kitchen that must mean this is a cinch. Why not give it a try?

Ingredients:
6 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans
1/3 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter

Directions:
Boil sweet potatoes for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until tender. Let cool; peel and mash. Combine sweet potatoes, vanilla, sugar, eggs, milk and 1/2 cup butter and beat until smooth. Spoon into a lightly greased 12 x 8 x 2 baking dish.

Combine brown sugar, pecans, flour and 2 tablespoons butter; sprinkle over caserole. Bake at 350F degrees for 30 minutes. This is a great side dish for the holidays!

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Seeing Central Florida from the Water

When you're in Florida and would like to spend one morning or afternoon doing something that isn’t in all the guidebooks, drive just three miles north of Orlando into Winter Park, and visit the Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour. Driving into Winter Park, it is difficult to tell that this historic little berg sits on three lovely lakes. That’s because the lakes are surrounded by gorgeous, expensive homes that block your view. There is only one business on the local lakes and it’s the Boat Tour, and through it you can see the real beauty of this part of Central Florida.

The Scenic Boat tour was inaugurated in 1938 by Captain Walt Meloon, and the little business has survived in spite of the fact that homeowners on the lakes would rather the whole thing went away. But its historic legacy always wins the day so it has endured.

The boats are now flat like “party boats,” and have skippers that are well-versed in local history. They will tell you how the lakes were instrumental in the development of Central Florida and its early timber industry: in the 19th century pine logs were floated along the lakes to narrow gauge railroads and then to market.

You are also bound to see some beautiful wildlife, great clue heron, snowy egrets, osprey, and even great bald eagles make their homes on these lakes. Once, going through one of the canals between Lake Osceola and Lake Virginia we watched as a barred owl on a low branch dozed and watched us as we motored by.

You’ll also see award winning Rollins College from the lake side, which is the prettiest way to see it, and you will see some stunning homes. The boats leave every hour on the hour from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., every day of the year except Christmas Day. It is an inexpensive family-owned operation and I highly reccommend it. When you stop in say hello to owner Ron Hightower. By the way, the boats are open air, so bring a hat if you want some shade. Click on the headline to visit the Boat Tour's site on the Web.
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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Cornbread Dressing: Deep South Style


Thanksgiving isn't really about a bountiful table groaning with food. It is the one American holiday that brings the family together to say thanks for our many blessings as a nation. If they come together and eat quite a lot of good food while they are at it: well, what better way to enjoy the day?

My grandmother Chapman was a terrific cook and this cornbread dressing for turkey comes from her family, who had been in the United States one generation after immigrating from the lowlands of Scotland. So, though I don't know it to be true, I suspect this receipe is something modified from my grandmother's own celtic culture, with a lot of Alabama thrown in.

Ingredients
1 3/4 Cups corn meal
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoot baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs (beaten)
3 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons shortening (melted)
1 cup diced onions
1 cup diced celery
poultry seasoning (about 1 tablespoot)

Sift corn meal, soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. In another dish combine eggs and buttermilk and add to dry ingredients, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened. Melt shortening in a skillet and saute onions and celery. Stir into cornbread batter and dump bak into the skillet. Bake at 450F degrees for about 20 minutes, until firm and golden brown on top. If you do this the night before, you can let the cornbread cool overnight.

When the bread is cool, break it up, ad some more chopped celery, a little milk and some poultry seasoning. If you have pecans, you can add them here. Make the stuffing damp with the milk so that it sticks together a little. Don't make it too wet as it will be moistened with juice from the turkey. You can add anything that suits you to the mix, even cranberries if you choose.

Mash it together with you hands and stuff the turkey using a large spoon. Cook the turkey as directed, and your dressing will be the hit of the gathering. My sister, the best cook in the family, has proved this on many a holiday. Enjoy!
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Monday, November 10, 2008

The Tale of A Strange House in Portugal



One year my work took me to Lisbon, Portugal, where a group of us were sent to cover Expo 1998 Lisboa, a sort of in-between-and-almost-but not-quite a full-blown World’s Fair. The real World’s Fair would take place at Expo 2000 in Hannover and the Lisboa event was a sort of prelude to that.

A gaggle of us were going—perhaps as many as thirty or more during the month of September—and, as it often happens, no one had thought to make hotel bookings early enough. There was not a room to be had anywhere within a day’s drive of Lisbon during the time we needed all those rooms.

So my boss, who was a very creative person, reached into his desk for a big tome titled Grand Estates of the World for Rent (I’m not sure of the real title but it was something like this.) He thumbed through the Portugal section and found a house in Sintra, a hillside village of estates about thirty miles outside Lisbon. The one he liked was called Quinta (Portuguese for farmhouse) do Biester. It had eight bedrooms, four bathrooms and a full staff and the whole thing rented for $10,000 for the month. What with all the people coming and going during the thirty days we would be at the Expo, we figured that price was no more expensive than a bunch of hotel rooms, so booked it we did.

I was sent first to get the key and open the place up. I was in Sweden at the time on another assignment, so I arrived early of an evening in the lingering dusk of later summer Lisbon. Lisbon was at that time, an odd city. Recently moving out of the dark ages of its communist/socialist years, hidden from the economic growth of Europe by its politics and the mountains that isolate it from Spain, it was the Land That Time Forgot. Men all wore suits and ties everywhere and chain-smoked cigarettes. Beautiful and slightly seedy buildings with magnificent facades of Moorish tiles sat adjacent to sidewalks full of rubble and trash. Drinking a cola as you window shopped caused a sensation, since this was just not done in Portugal. People sat down to drink and eat and that was that. And they took their time at everything. No matter when you started dinner, it went on for hours and never ended until after midnight.

A driver took me up into the nearby hills to find the Quinta do Biester. The dampness from the nearby ocean wrapped around the particulates in the evening air (Portugal was still using leaded gas) to create a Londonish-Sherlock-Holmsian fog as we drove the hairpin turns up to the Quinta. Above us rose the ruins of a Moorish castle. When we arrived at the gates of the Quinta I could only hope no other cars were coming in either direction because we had to stop and get out to open the gate and there was no shoulder of the road at that point and there was only room for one car.

We got the gate open and entered the grounds as the darkness fell. This was the strangest house I had ever seen. Gothic doesn’t begin to describe it. The front door was made of iron and leaded glass, but one of the glass panes was broken and had been replaced with cardboard. The front yard was beautifully landscaped and had a gravel drive, but the central fountain wasn’t working and was filled with brackish water. On the balcony above the door the pillars were held up by the wings of concrete bats.

It was gorgeous, though, when you entered. Paneled pine everywhere, gargoyles on the banisters, real art on the walls, a huge living room that overlooked the valley below. It was stunning and it was strange. There was a chapel upstairs and I figured, if you lived in a place like this, what with the bats and the gargoyles, you probably would need that chapel indeed.

The place looked as if it had been furnished by a gay decorator from San Francisco. Lots of Victorian pieces and ruffles and interspersed with that were some really good antiques. The bedrooms looked comfortable and mine had its own fireplace. The housekeeper was nice. Her husband was the gardener and their son waited table (if you wanted to eat supper there). But as in the movie the Haunting, they didn’t live in. So there was nobody to hear you if you screamed in the night.

It turned out to be a delightful stay in spite of the strangeness of the house. We were all busy shuttling back and forth to the Expo where we exhausted ourselves walking on Portuguese cobbles and breathing in all that lead in the air. There was a maid who washed and ironed my blouses (I liked that part especially), and when we dragged home in the evenings we ogled the gargoyles, the bats and the chapel but saw no ghostly apparitions. I did wonder why nobody cleaned the fountain in the front or put a new piece of glass in the front door, but I realized after a time that this was just kind of a Portuguese thing. They didn’t seem to notice stuff like that. On the other hand, there were always great bouquets of fresh flowers in the entry hall. Rich strong coffee with real cream and fresh homemade bread in the morning. In the elegant living room, with its Victorian aspect, there was a plastic 1970s radio, which, when switched on seemed to play only tunes by Neil Diamond.

On the last morning, several of the guys were working on their laptops in the cavernous dining room. I was sitting on the front steps with my luggage dreaming of taking a nice hot bath back home, waiting for our driver. I wandered back into the house at one point, and the housekeeper, Senora Gomes said to me in her almost incomprehensible English: “Doo joo meet zees deeerectoore Roman Polanski?”

“Have I met Roman Polanski? No, I never have. I believe he is in exile from the U.S. after an unfortunate incident involving an underage girl.”

“He ees coming jeer.”

“He’s coming here. To the Quinta Biester?”

“Jees.”

I pondered that for a minute and she continued.

“He ees making zeee mooovy at zeez Quinta with Johnny Depp.”

Oh right. I nodded my head and rolled my eyes and went back out front to wait for our driver, who, in Portuguese fashion was always about forty minutes late for everything. The house was so weird and the staff somewhat unusual so I figured Senora Gomes was just out of her mind like the rest of the country.

As I pondered how I would rehabilitate the front garden, had it been mine, a little white van drove up. Out of the car came a driver and a group of other men who looked, as it were, somewhat European.

One of them was a very small man, with shaggy gray hair, and round frameless glasses. He looked an awful lot to me like Roman Polanski.

“Hello,” he said with his European accented English. “I am Roman Polanski. I so apologize for coming now. But you see we are scouting locations for a movie with Johnny Depp, and I so wanted to see this house.”

“Uh, yes, yes, of course,” I said. “Please make yourself at home. We’re just getting set to leave so Senora Gomes will show you around.” I hoped my head wasn’t spinning around the way Linda Blair’s did in the Exorcist.

Later, after the little white van departed carrying inside it the man who had once been married to Sharon Tate, and he was now smiling and waving goodbye to me--the guys working at their laptops in the dining room came out with dropped jaws to talk to me on the front steps. “That was Roman Polanski!!!” they said. “He just walked around saying hello to us, apologizing for intruding into this lovely Rosemary’s Baby-type house. What the heck was he doing here????”

I just smiled. I still wasn’t sure I had seen what I thought I had seen. It must have been the house.

About a year later I learned, somewhat to my relief, we had not all seen a ghost. Mr. Polanski’s movie with Johnny Depp actually appeared in theaters and you can see the Quinto do Biester plain as day in it. The movie is called The Ninth Gate, and as Depp approaches the front of the Quinta, you can see that they still have that piece of cardboard in place of the broken leaded glass in the door. Inside, the filmmaker removed all the furniture, which is a shame, because I was especially hoping to see that plastic radio again. I wish you could have seen it. But you still get the creepy aspect. I would tell you that I wouldn’t want to spend a night in that house.

But I already have.

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Sunday, November 9, 2008

Coming This Week: A Veteran's Day Tale About Missing Letters From the Front & A Tale About a Strange House in Portugal


What happened to his missing letters home? When they didn't come, his father in Homewood, Alabama assumed he was dead.


The strange house in the Portuguese mountains near the town of Sintra: what was the exiled film director doing there?
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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Voter Turnout High: But Still Far Below Predictions


I fell for it. I saw the long lines and believed a local volunteer at the polls--and those "experts" on TV--who said they thought the voter turnout in the 2008 election would approach 85%. New figures show the estimated voter turnout in this presidential election ran about 64.1%. This turnout is the highest since the 1908 election when 65.2% of the people went to the polls, but it still doesn't come close to those wild predictions.

We haven't had even an 80% voter turnout in an American Presidential election since 1876. So it just goes to show you: a lot of Americans may have gone to the polls this year but more than a third of them stayed home, didn't vote by absentee ballot, didn't vote early, and just didn't show.

If you look at the records of the turnouts in all U.S. Presidential elections, the average number is about 50%. So--if you didn't vote, don't complain during the next four years. Twenty percent more voters at the polls--which would have brought turnout up to that 85% number--could have pushed the election either direction in a very big way. (For more info on voter turnout in American elections click on the headline to go to "infoplease".)
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Long Lines at the Polls Turned out to Mean Florida Went for Obama!


"Do you think the election has been decided yet? Let's click on the headline and read Robin's blog to find out what happened while we were waiting in this line."
"Okay. Want to use my Iphone, or your Blackberry?"
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Long Lines At the Polls Could Mean a Surprising Night

"I sure am glad we brought these chairs!"
Line at my precinct at 10:30 a.m.
One fellow used his bike to roll with the flow.

Lots of time to chat with neighbors.

For the first time in all the years I've been voting, I waited an hour and forty-five minutes in line to cast my ballot in a presidential election. The long wait wasn't due to any inefficiencies at the polling place: the system was working well. There were just a heck of a lot of people.

My Florida precict has 1900 registered voters, and the staff and volunteers were processing about 100 voters per hour, or about 500 total since the polls opened at 7:00 a.m. In addition, about 700 had already voted by absentee ballot or in early voting. That left only 700 more registered voters unaccounted for at 12:30 p.m. when I headed home, and about 100 of those were standing in line as I departed. The polls will be open until 7:00 p.m. in Florida (one hour later in the Florida panhandle, which is in Central Time) so it is possible, at least at this rate in this one precinct, that turnout could be above 75%.

I had been pooh-poohing all the gab on TV about how this would be a high turnout election. As a reporter, I've been hearing that prediction my entire career, and it has never come true. The last time--in my lifetime--that the voter turnout level reached even 60%, was in 1968--and back then I was in high school. After 1968, the percentage began to drop every four years until finally settling in at a low of 49% (1996) and a high of 55% (1992 and 2004).

And that's been the rule for most of American history. You would have to go back to 1840 to find a voter turnout of 80.2%, and in that race voters were anxious to defeat incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren and replace him with war hero William Henry Harrison. Tunrout fell for two more decades then rose again to 81.2% in 1860, when the pre-Civil War drama brought voters to the polls in record numbers. Numbers fell again until 1876, when the turnout rose to 81.8% and America had its most disputed election of all time--(Rutherford B. Hayes vs. Sam Tilden). In the next most disputed election of our history--the election of 2000--the voter turnout was just 51%.

A volunteer at my precinct said he had been told to expect a turnout of 85% and at noon, they were right on track to meet that prediction. If that's true, this truly will be a history-making election. Americans exercising a precious right in record numbers: that is big news. Especially since it is a right we've neglected so long. A right my father and millions of others risked their lives to ensure. Whatever happens today, it is a great day for America.

And it will mean one more thing: a turnout of 85% would blow away all of the "models" pollsters use to predict elections. So we could be in for a very surprising night.

(For voting statistics in U.S. elections go to this very helpful web site http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
and please email me with experiences you had on voting day.)

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Home is the Sailor from the Sea: the Hunter From the Hill


This is my neice Dana making noodles with her host mother during her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan. Following her service in the Peace Corps, she became a military officer and has just returned from Central Asia again where she completed a very different tour of duty in Afghanistan.

There has been so much news on the Afghan front these past few months—skirmishes at Afghan’s border with Pakistan, policemen running amok and shooting Allied soldiers, heroes going home for the last time—my family and I have been on edge about our family member serving there. Lt. Dana (we don’t use her last name here) has been at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan since July and though we’ve been proud of her service we’ve been worried every single day for her safety.

Today she arrived back in the U.S.A. Though her mother and I were there to see her off and watch her plane push back in July, she didn’t want us there today. She wants to have a few days on her own to get back into all the wonderful and mundane activities of American life: get her cell phone turned back on, get a jump for her dead car battery, pick up her dog, Tupelo, and order pizza delivered to her front door. Ah the wonders of the normal world.

She’s been living in a place where there were frequent services on base for fallen heroes. Where she often heard rounds fired in anger just outside the walls of the compound. Where she worked eighteen hour days knowing each thing she did might mean safety or danger for a comrade. The fact that she had to put reconstituted goat’s milk on her cereal, and that the latrines were without frills paled in comparison to the life and death decisions she had to make. She lived in a world of almost constant night, working eighteen hour days on Zulu time. Where intelligence agents kept their eye on her as she worked out at the gym and where rare moments of laughter came watching American cartoons translated into Farsi and captioned in fractured English.

It has continued to trouble me that we send our young men and women into harm’s way overseas without making any sacrifice of our own at home. What has anyone in America done to support these young people who are working to keep us safe from another September 11th? I would like to see our next president stand up and give each and every one of us a responsibility that will in some way serve as a reminder of what these volunteers are doing.

But for today I can celebrate. Our officer has come home safe and sound. God bless her, and God bless this great nation.
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Sunday, October 26, 2008

How Honest Can You Be With an Elderly Parent Who is Ill?

My father is an amazing gardener as he shows in 1998 with his pumpkin crop. He was always hoping he would get one big enough to enter in the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Contest.


My sister and me (I'm in front, she's behind me) and our neighbor Peggy (behind my sister) dressed for Halloween back in those long ago days. It was always cold in the evening in California in October, so we had on several layers of clothes.

My father is so much on my mind this time of year. When we were children, he always walked with us as we went from house to house on Halloween Night. He enjoyed the night--and the candy--as much as we did, and even in the days before parents worried about the safety of their children (the way they do today) it would not have occured to him to to let his little ones wander about of a fall evening without his loving care. One year when I was very small, he walked with us on crutches. He had stepped on a curb in San Francisco, where he worked at an engineering firm, and broke his foot. What a nice guy he was to walk us around even when he had a cast on his foot. And now we care for him. Click on the headline for my blog about honesty and disease and how my sister and I have determined how to handle the truth in a loving way.


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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

What Was She Thinking?

She looks as if she's having fun ...
But all the while she wants to run ...

She hopes no one she knows will spot her ...

And then she finds she's in hot water!


Just because you are young and in the public eye and someone asks you to be in a dunk tank for a charity event, doesn't mean you have to agree to do it. But Robin, when she was young, was always trying to make everybody happy and wanted everyone to like her. Thus, when someone made this request to her, she said yes. Worse yet, someone was there with a camera to record the event. And even worse, she saved the pictures. And possibly even worse than that, she now offers them up here on her blog. But she does so as a lesson. Trying to please everybody in the world is impossible. If you are in the public eye and you want to please everyone you may end up looking a little silly (see the above pictures.) If you want to help out a charity, think about it long and hard, and then, instead of doing something like this, write the charity a check and wish them well. Robin thinks these pictures will prevent her from becoming President of the United States, but considering how silly the candidates have been this year, we don't think a little indiscretion like this one will do it.

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Sunday, October 19, 2008

Rita Hayworth: Movie Star and Victim


Margarita Carmen Cansino was born in 1918, two years before the U.S. Congress ratified the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allowed women to vote in national elections. Her father was from Spain and her mother a dancer in the Ziegfield Follies. Her "foreign" heritage was not an advantage during her years in film and when she was put under contract to Columbia studios they lightened her dark tresses to auburn and shed her Latin name, changing it to Rita Hayworth.
She was a girl who never had time to finish school and who was drafted to dance with her father in Tijuana dives at the age of twelve. Insecure and shy, uneducated and easily manipulated she was continually used by men who saw only her sex appeal and beauty and none of the vulnerability the lie beneath the surface.
Like so many Hollywood women of her era, the very stardom she sought became a curse she alternately clung to and tried to shed.
When she died in the care of her daughter Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, at the age of 68, the fawning lovers and users were gone. But in one of the many ironies of life, her death from Alzheimer's was the beginning of a new awareness of this terrible disease. Her daughter Yasmin took up the cause. Click on the headline above for my blog on how this victim and star left a legacy of which she could be very proud.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

John McCain, Fighter Pilot, Finally Showed up for Presidential Debate Number Three


"I am not George Bush. If you wanted to run against George Bush you should have run four years ago."
" Joe the Plumber: I've got news for you. According to Obama's tax plan, you're a rich man."
(For my full blog on the debate, click the headline.)

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Write a Book, Save a Bank: All in a Day's Work for this Forgotten Writer



Writer Irving Bacheller on the grounds of his Florida estate, which he called "Gate o' the Isles." It included fifty acres and the house overlooked a lake, so there was lots of room for his dog to enjoy.


Bacheller was a kind man who served on many boards and always gave an autograph when requested.


A photo portrait of Bacheller for the back cover of one of his books.


Bacheller's home became a tourist attraction and was on numerous postcards sold in Florida.


This photo shows tourists paddling to get a better look of Bacheller's house, which you can spot in the distance by it distinctive roof.

(Click on the headline at the top, to read today's blog about how Bacheller and a friend saved a Florida bank during the last big economic crisis.)

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Monday, October 13, 2008

Thoughts about a Duchess and a Princess on Columbus Day

We’re having a holiday in America in honor of Christopher Columbus today, a nice relief from all the bad economic news since all the banks and most of the markets are closed. For my part I went to see a new movie called The Duchess, a British film about the 18th century beauty Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, 5th Duchess of Devonshire. Her story has some parallels to the story of Lady Diana Spencer, the late Princess of Wales, since there were three people (frequently more than that) in Georgiana’s marriage to the Duke, just as there were in Diana’s marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales. The coincidences in their lives are a bit eerie since Diana Spencer is actually a distant relation of Georgiana’s through Georgina’s brother, the 2nd Earl Spencer.

The movie stars Keira Knightley as the Duchess and Ralph Fiennes as her thoroughly unpleasant husband. Ever since Fiennes played the Nazi death camp administrator in Schindler’s List he’s been especially good at making my skin crawl. This time he made his impact by doing and saying thoroughly reprehensible things using that peculiarly English manner of registering no emotion on his face whatsoever, whether he was feeding a dog or violating a woman. Keira Knightly is gorgeous and was excellent in the part, and the clothes were really something to see. I also enjoyed Charlotte Rampling, another legendary beauty, as Georgiana’s mother. But I must say it was a bleak story. Perhaps more so because one can see that even though the story in this film took place in the 18th century, two hundred years later the peers of the realm are still behaving badly towards their women, as Diana, Princess of Wales, could attest if she had lived.

I was lucky to cover Diana during her one official visit to Washington in the 1980s. She was at the height of her fame, still married to Charles, Prince of Wales, and only the insiders knew then that the marriage was a sham. Seeing her in person at a tea the British Embassy in Washington gave for a small group of reporters covering her, I was struck by how much taller she was than I had thought, how much thinner, and by how unhappy she looked. I assumed at the time she was tired, what with two small children and jet lag. But we later learned the truth—that she had good reason to be unhappy. That same weekend, she danced at the White House with John Travolta and I often remember it now—how for that that short moment she did laugh with joy. She was beautiful, visiting the Reagan White House, and dancing with a star who was really good on the dance floor. Pretty nice.

But the new film and the old story of Diana also remind me why we don’t use titles in America—they were outlawed by our founding fathers, God bless them. We’re a meritocracy and though we love reading about the bad behavior of the royals in other countries we like the idea in America that you are not what you are born to, but what you raise yourself up to be. I wish Diana Spencer, and her ancestor Georgiana Spencer had both been born to a better world. (For more pictures of Diana's visit to Washington D.C.
(Click on the title of this piece and visit my other blog.)
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Thursday, October 2, 2008

About My Dad


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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

A Letter From the Front

I have a niece who is serving in Afghanistan and we're expecting her home for Thanksgiving. She can't tell us what she's up to over there, but this recent note about daily life captures a lot of what it feels like to be an officer in a foreign land. I know she'll forgive me for sharing it with you:

Dear Aunt Robin:

The water in the showers is heavily chlorinated. Periodically throughout the day if I lift my hands near my face I can smell the smell of a swimming pool wafting from my skin. The air this morning must have been more damp than usual or the chemical composition slightly different because my shower brought me immediately back to the smell of Covington pool in California, where my grandfather would take me and my sisters swimming so long ago. He would race us in the pool and let us swim until it was time to walk back home and have dinner. There are no swimming pools here (that I know of) and there isn't much water. The diminishing hours of daylight make it feel colder than it actually is. Fall has arrived in Afghanistan and the air is more crisp, less forgiving, and dry. I had nearly forgotten the effects of a high dry climate. My jogging clothes cling to my skin in the strange wrinkled relief map pattern of some unknown place. I lather my hands with lotion, and I'm not exactly sure where the lotion goes, but it doesn't seem to relieve my skin.

I have five more weeks to plug through and can't wait to eat food that hasn't been processed then frozen then shipped to Afghanistan, then thawed then cooked then fed to me and my colleagues. The chow hall makes a product here we affectionately call the voo-doo BBQ as it is some type of compressed meat with bones inserted to give it the appearance of ribs. None of us is fooled. Many still eat it. I draw the line when bones need to be added to a meal.

Thank you all for the dear care packages and letters. I hope all is well.

D
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