PaulSkolnick.com

CLEARWATER, FL—Well, we sure thought we’d planned everything perfectly.

Rebecca and I discussed at length a sunset outing to snap some “golden hour” pictures. Everything was going in our favor—the weather was perfect, the traffic cooperated in letting us get our stuff into the hotel, and even the pizza we agreed on for dinner arrived rapidly.

Moonrise over Dunedin, FL (Photo by Rebecca)

We batted around a couple places we could go to get the kinds of pictures we were hoping for, and finally settled on Dunedin, which is the next town north of Clearwater on the Gulf. Although the horizon there is shielded by barrier islands, we were hoping to find some people milling around, something in the foreground that would give our shots some perspective, and maybe a surprise of some kind that would help the composition.

Everything cooperated. We got to a waterfront spot and got ready to shoot.  Rebecca was snapping away, grabbing the scene in all its golden glory, but I was having some problems.  My camera kept flashing “ERR,” the dreaded Nikon code that something wasn’t right inside the camera.  I switched lenses, switched cards, switched batteries… nothing would get rid of the dreaded ERR. Luckily, the last thing I did before leaving the car was slip my ancient Casio point-and-shoot into my pocket.My just-in-case thinking paid off.

Click [MORE] for some of the best shots we got, starting with Rebecca’s.

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I don’t know why I let the issue fester for months, but I did. The problem was a basic esthetic one—I wanted the links in the blog to look a little differently than they had been looking—but for months I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. (See how that one is blue and bold?)

Computer code I wrote and inserted into the blog's DNA

My code-writing compatriots are, I realize, laughing out loud as they read about my efforts. What I wanted to do was, I’m sure, the code equivalent of putting a gas cap on a car. I read about the issue in the theme forum. I Googled what I expected were the words to describe my goal, and then flipped from site to site in a vain effort to make the links look a little more like I wanted them to. Every time I tried inserting what every printed and online reference said was the code, I’d suffer a fatal error of one sort or another—either it would do nothing at all or it would change all of the text into something hard to look at and impossible to read.

I figured I’d give it one more go. I made a quick run through the literature and then took one last stab at the code. The fix amounted to two whole lines! And then I previewed. Voila! Precisely what I wanted to see. The links were blue and bold.

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The email I received two weeks ago was par for the course.  “Are we related?” it asked.  The writer was 7,500 miles away, in Israel, and the answer was most definitely, “Yes we are.”

It turns out the relationship is a distant one.  In fact, we’re third cousins.  We share the same great-great-grandfather.  I’ve detailed the exact relationships in this branch of the family in a graphical tree (with pictures) and in a text tree (no pictures).  I’ve also detailed the three other branches of my family, from each of my grandparents, in separate trees.

Such is the way “digital genealogy” plays out in the modern age.  My new-found cousin had been searching the Internet for references to his late father and turned up a link to one of the family trees I have posted here.  (The reason I posted the trees is so that people using search engines can find family members, and me, and get a sense who we’re all related.)

Since I figured out how to turn the family trees into online documents—which was a huge learning curve I finally conquered last Halloween—I’ve had a half-dozen or so inquiries from people asking if we’re related.  One cousin stumbled across the family- tree link while Googling for information on her mother’s ballet performances.  Another researcher came across the family tree because one of my distant relatives was married to one of her distant relatives.

It’s actually been great fun for me to correspond with, and in some cases to meet, members of my extended family—instructive, interesting, and informative.

I figure if I’ve had six hits in six months, who knows what the future will hold!

The burger itself is a work of art. This one is a half-pound of beef on pretzel bread.

It started innocently enough. A friend’s Facebook post on best burgers scrolled by me. What caught my eye was the address. The place being heralded as one of the best was a stone’s throw from me. With proximity as my primary guide, it would just be wrong not to check it out.

It turns out the Hole in the Wall Burger Joint is not where its address says it should be. The street address is 11028 Santa Monica Blvd., but the front door of the place (and virtually every other part of it) is around the corner on Bentley Avenue. Perhaps the best description is that it’s behind the donut shop, but that probably doesn’t look too great on marketing materials.

I got there pretty early on my initial visit, well before the lunch crowd rolled in, and that gave me a few minutes to chat with co-owner Bill Dertouzos. It turns out the place is actually the beneficiary of the financial meltdown. Dertouzos, who has a substantial chef resume, was running a high-end catering service in the space. When the economy tanked, he said, so did demand for high-end corporate and entertainment-industry catering. Given the small size of the space, he figured his best option for survival was to start serving something with broad appeal.

I opted for the house-made (as opposed to the sweet potato) fries.

It seems to be working. As customers started streaming through the place, it was clear it has a following.

Lunch wasn’t cheap—about $14 for a burger, fries, a drink, and a tip—but it was the kind of food that would cost two or three times that amount in plusher surroundings. The variety is impressive—a choice of beef, turkey,veggie, chicken, or “special of the week” protein; different kinds of buns, including the unique (and very tasty) pretzel bun shown above; many different spreads and toppings; and a few homemade specialties, like a made-on-the-site ketchup and a very tasty relish.

I really enjoyed the fries as well.

My pal Bryan Frank, who has joined me on two of my visits to the Hole in the Wall, likes it as well. And I think he also surpassed me in capturing the place in pixels.

Two vivid signs of spring in southern California

I got a chance over the weekend to do my best to capture spring’s arrival in southern California, and chose as the best place to do it the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, a hideaway nearly walking distance from home where I’d never really been.

The state park is on the south side of Jefferson Boulevard, a remnant of one of the properties once owned by tycoon “Lucky” Baldwin, who despite his name wasn’t sufficiently fortunate to live long enough to see oil discovered there.

The land is now preserved as a site for native flora, like the vast fields of California encelia, not surprisingly part of the daisy family. The displays say there are also some wild animals—coyotes, squirrels, and rattlesnakes—but I didn’t see any of them.

The road through the flowers to the top

The park turned out to be a gathering point for those looking to get a little exercise up the road from the coastal plain to the top of the hill through the wildflowers.

I chose the road less-traveled—the hiking trail from the visitor’s center through some fields to the peak. It was an invigorating walk with great views—the ocean and Santa Monica to the west, Century City to the north, Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire, and Downtown LA to the east—and wonderful flowers. And it had the advantage of being a little less taxing than the route straight up the hill.

I’ve posted a slideshow with more of the shots I got, and I made them a little larger. Don’t hesitate to share your views in the Comments section below, or on Facebook.

Astonishing to me was the fact that this rugged land of indigenous and wild plants and animals was a few hundred yards south of, and a few hundred feet above, one of southern California’s rusting industrial corridors.

And then there’s the question of how I could live in this area virtually all of my life and not even know the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook was even here.

Ahhh, the discoveries in our own backyards!

Downtown Los Angeles as seen from Palos Verdes, a distance of nearly 25 miles.

Some of the best days in Los Angeles are right after it rains. Yesterday was just such a day.

I was struck while driving in the morning by how close the snow-capped mountains appeared to be. In truth, they’re not far—maybe 30 miles or so from the coastal edges of the Basin—but the day after a rain, they look like they’re walking distance.

There just wasn’t the time in the morning to position myself for some good shots, but I certainly made the time in the afternoon. My pal Stu Chalfin and I went over to Peninsula High School in Palos Verdes, walked onto the athletic field behind the school, climbed to the top row of the visitor’s stands to get above the foliage, and snapped pictures for a few minutes. These two were taken with a 200mm lens at about 4 in the afternoon. There was a bit more haze than there had been in the morning, believe it or not, but conditions were still remarkable for photographing and just looking.

Newport Beach as seen from Palos Verdes, a distance of about 25 miles.

The view toward Orange County was nearly as spectacular as the northeasterly one. On the far right of the shot are the big buildings in the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa area, just inland from Newport Beach.

You can see the green top of the west end of the Vincent Thomas Bridge on the right side of the picture, about halfway between the top and bottom.

There aren’t many days this clear in southern California, which made it that much more important to click the shutter on this one.

It is hard for me to let the day pass without nodding to the news of the death today of Edwin Donald “Duke” Snider.

Snider was a huge figure in my childhood. He was not only a star of the Brooklyn Dodgers (he’d been key in beating the dreaded Yankees in the World Series) and the L.A. Dodgers, but he was also our neighbor.

I knew this because my dad would frequently point out in the late 50s and early 60s Snider’s house, just blocks from our own and directly across the street from Lynwood High School, where my dad taught.

Snider retired and was eclipsed in my memory by other Dodger greats like Sandy Koufax. And over time, I began to figure out that my dad sometimes gave expedient answers to his inquisitive oldest child rather than factual ones. Yeah, there were some things that turned out to be not quite like my dad had described them. And for many years, I thought Duke Snider’s home on Carlin Avenue in Lynwood was just another one on my dad’s list.

Then, almost 20 years ago, a shocking revelation one morning in the newspaper: Duke Snider had indeed lived in Lynwood, and exactly where my dad said he had!

View Larger Map

Now this is the house I remember my dad pointing out as Snider’s, but I’m unable to verify it. (This one is on the southeast corner of Carlin Avenue and Bullis Road.)

So here’s to Duke Snider, who hammered the Yankees for four home runs in the 1955 World Series, who is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and who restored a kid’s trust in his father’s word.

I popped into my neighborhood polling place Tuesday afternoon at about 3:30. It was just me and the poll workers, which struck me as a little odd.

The election was a “special” to fill a vacancy caused by the cancer death last year of our State Senator.

The poll workers told me I was the 42nd voter to come in since voting opened at 7 a.m.

Now it’s not like the State of California lacks for big issues that need to be decided. There are the dual matters of what we think the most equitable method of taxation should be and what state services we wish to pay for. Among the things that could change dramatically this year are:

• how we provide for those among us least able to provide for themselves
• whether we allow the next generation of Californians to become educated and provide the work-force for our economy in the coming decades
• and how we set aside our once-pristine land and allow folks to use it for recreation

When the votes were tallied, it seems only slightly more than one in 10 of the nearly half-million registered voters in the district wished to have a say on the issues. (The turnout was almost a percentage point higher in a district in the northern part of L.A. County also having a special election for the State Senate.) Nearly three in every five ballots cast in both districts were mail-in ballots.

This came five days after hordes of people risked their livelihoods — and their lives — to turn out in Cairo’s central square to demand a say in governing themselves.

The contrast is — to me, at least — stark.

When it comes right down to it, we invented a system of government that — despite its many faults — allows us to pick the fools who lead us. That’s something others around the world are willing to die for.

And to 90 per cent of us, it doesn’t even matter.

It was a pretty straightforward mission that landed me yesterday at Home of Peace Memorial Park and Mausoleum on the east side of Los Angeles. I was off to track down the grave of a distant relative I’d never met, and to see if from its inscription I could deduce any more information than I had about him, and possibly his ancestry. And indeed, I did find his grave, precisely where the helpful man at the cemetery said it would be.

But there was something else at this cemetery—the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Los Angeles area—that I needed to see. Some years back, my well-traveled colleague David Jackson told me he’d been at a Jewish cemetery in East L.A. immediately after the 1994 Northridge earthquake to check on reports of damage and he’d seen an odd sight there.

While he waited for a cemetery official to talk to him about the damage, he watched a steady stream of visitors all go to a single grave. It was in an older section of the cemetery, and David said these people didn’t look like mourners so much as they appeared to be tourists.

David wandered over to have a look for himself at what might be drawing so many visitors, and found a tombstone much like all the others in the area. It marked the grave of Jerome Howard, who died nearly 60 years ago in what might fairly be described as the prime of his life—48 years old. It took him a lot of thought, he told me years later, to figure out that Jerome Howard—Yehuhda Lev, son of Shlomo Natan the Levite, according to the Hebrew inscription at the top of the tombstone—was in fact Curly of The Three Stooges. There was no stream of visitors to Curly’s grave the bright February afternoon I was there, but the man at the cemetery desk told me Curly drew several hundred people a year to his tomb.

The full view of the grave bears witness to Curly’s enduring popularity. While a few of the other graves in the area showed some signs they’d been visited recently—Jews have the custom of leaving pebbles on a grave when they visit—nothing was even close to the stones and coins that festooned Curly’s grave.

Standing there, it seemed odd to give a moment of silence to a man who had given me so much laughter over so many years. I was struck to discover that he was dead before I was even born (which I hadn’t known before seeing the dates on the tombstone).

There are, to my continuing astonishment, people who don’t find the Three Stooges funny. My wife Chris is in this category. So, I’ve discovered, are most of the other females in the world. (My daughter Rebecca may be an exception to this sweeping rule. She was when she was about eight, but I haven’t polled her on the issue since she entered adolescence. Things could have changed.)

I was also a little surprised to read that this guy who’d made so much in life funny was himself not amused by life. Taciturn and anti-social when not performing, he apparently found humor increasingly in his life from alcohol. He suffered a series of strokes and did not perform much for the final five years of his life.

Even after my reflection on the ironies of life and the distortion caused in life by the lens of a camera, I wasn’t quite done at Home of Peace. The clerk had told me I might also want to stop into the mausoleum that dominates the center of the cemetery.

There, in a solemn marble corridor, without benefit of his Hebrew name inscribed on the plaque, was one of Curly’s older brothers—Shemp.

Shemp didn’t outlive Curly by much—three years. And in my estimation, and the estimation of a good many other fans of the films, his comic abilities never rose to the level of his younger brother.

I did not drive away from Home of Peace with any great insights on the Meaning of Life or thoughts about existentialism. But I did find myself on the ride home smiling privately about one pratfall or another I’d remembered from my youth seeing The Stooges do.

And that, I guess, would be the meaning of it all.

Jerry Lazar asked, and asked nicely, so here is an encore of the first song as Rebecca performed it in November at Tangelo’s Grille in Gulfport, FL.

I promised two and a half months ago, in a post on Rebecca’s performance at Tangelo’s Grille in Gulfport, FL, that I’d work on getting some video posted. I just wanted to show that I’m a man of my word.

Rebecca played for several hours that night at Tangelo’s, and she has played several times since then when I wasn’t able to attend. In all, I videotaped nine complete songs. This is the one Rebecca picked for posting. (Please forgive the amateurish camera movement. I think the tripod got bumped.)

Enjoy the music and enjoy Rebecca’s performance. Don’t hesitate to leave her a comment.

Surah Henya (Strober) Schkolnik, my great-grandmother

To my cousins in the Strauber-Strober-Struber line: my profuse apologies. In my haste to post updated family trees to the site last week, I made a big mistake. It was a technical error, but it had some real-world ramifications. The biggest of those ramifications is that it left about 250 relatives who should have been shown off the family tree completely.

I announced in my last post that there were slightly more than 1,000 people now counted in the lineage. The actual number of Strauber-Strober-Struber relatives listed on the current family tree is 1,236.

This is significant because the number of living relatives we know about, and of ancestors, is increasing quickly. The online world has meant that people we didn’t know were related have been able to find each other more easily than ever before.

Our GoogleGroup discussion, Jazlowiec, named for the shtetl in Galicia where my great-grandparents lived, has grown steadily over five years.  There are now more than 50 members.

And since posting the family tree on the website, we’ve had a number of inquiries from people who have stumbled upon the site while looking up their own names, or their ancestors’ names, in a search engine.  We’ve been able to confirm at least two of those inquiries and add perhaps another 40 or 50 names to the tree.

So the correct family trees are now posted on the site for the Strauber-Strober-Struber line.  There are two of them: a graphical version and a text version.

I spent a little time this weekend updating the family trees, and the new ones are worth having a look at if we’re related. There was, of course, the difficult task of updating the trees with people who have passed on since the last update, about two-and-a-half months ago. And there’s the glorious task of adding more names to the tree as we find people or people find us.

I’ve now charted five branches of my family—one for each of my grandparents, and an additional one for the family of my father’s father’s mother, Surah Henya Strober.

The numbers are pretty impressive. Here are the family lines and the number of names on each tree:

• Skolnick/Skolnik/Schkolnik – 187
• Tepper – 140
• Hoffman – 60
• Feuerstein – 413
• Strauber/Strober/Struber – 1,006

And I think I’ve been using the word “I” a little too much. Each of these trees is the result of a massive and dynamic collaboration, hundreds of hours of individual effort, some of it decades ago. My part in it was, quite honestly, getting it on the Web. Many others, some of whom I never met and didn’t know, put in the time to gain the knowledge of the family and document it.

If you don’t see your name on one of these trees and think it should be there, please be in touch. If you see your name but there’s no picture next to it, be in touch. If you see your name and there’s anything else wrong or incomplete, please be in touch.

It seemed at sunrise that it was going to be a glorious winter’s day in LA, and as the day unfolded, it didn’t disappoint. Crystal blue skies, temperatures hovering around 80, just a hint of a breeze. In Southern California, such days come and go without commentary. Anywhere else, they’d be hard-pressed to stop talking about the weather.

I drove over to my pal Stu Chalfin’s house, and together we headed a little west of where he lives to Bluff Cove, a rocky crescent you can appreciate from a turnout on the road but you have to hike a steep trail to experience on the beach.  We hiked it.

The ocean air, the surfers in the water, people out enjoying the outdoors. Click here or on the photo to see a slideshow of stills.

It is, after all, why we live here.

Rebecca arriving at LAX late on the night of Friday, Dec. 17. Because Rebecca travelled as an "unaccompanied minor," I received a pass to pick her up right at the arrival gate.

We passed a milestone last month. It was a surprisingly quiet milestone, but still fraught with significance.

When Rebecca stepped off the airplane late on the night of Friday, Dec. 17, at LAX, I was sitting right in front of the gate to greet her. It’s a benefit of “unaccompanied minor” status, which is how she has been travelling coast-to-coast—and occasionally to points in between—for over a decade now.

When I bought the UM ticket for her, which is something you can only do in person at the airport counter, the clerk asked when typing in her age whether I realized UM wasn’t required. I said, “Ma’am, I’m the parent of a 15-year-old. Do you think I haven’t been hearing about this for months already?”

Travelling on a UM ticket requires a lot of sign-ins and sign-outs, additional ID showing, and that kind of thing. It also adds a pretty hefty fee to the travel. But it means the parent gets to go to the gate on departures as well as arrivals to hug his little one a few more times and be a guiding presence. It means the parent is there to dig deep into his pocket at airport concession stands for the coffee and pastries and other pleasantries that  accompany air travel.

In essence, it’s a fee that lets me be a parent for a little longer.

Rebecca had made her feelings on the matter clear for quite some time. She said she could dig just as deeply for the sweets (even if it meant that I’d have to put the money there anyway), and that given her consistently high grades in math, she figured she could count her way to the correct gate.

This turned out to be the perfect time to test her independence. She travelled back to Florida on Sunday, Dec. 26, and her sister Andrea would be sitting beside her.

Because Andrea and Rebecca travelled on regular adult tickets, I was permitted to accompany them only to the beginning of the security lanes.

Instead of a relaxed time with the girls in the airport lounge, I waved goodbye from the construction area outside security and watched as they turned the corner as adults.

I’d always thought I was an indispensable force in my daughter’s life, and perhaps I am. But after the couple hundred thousand air miles she has already racked up in her 15 years, she seems to think getting on an airplane is something she’s capable of on her own.

I hung around outside the security doors for a few minutes after the girls were out of sight, but no one came running back to ask for my help. And I didn’t hear anything from around the corner to indicate there was a problem with them not putting their shoes flat on the belt or taking their laptops out of their cases.

Hmmm. Maybe I did teach them something.

I came across this animated map which shows 10 centuries of European border history compressed into 5 minutes.  It has been on YouTube for two weeks now, and has had nearly a half-million views.

The map illustrates why it is difficult to say with precision exactly where my ancestors are from.  For much of the millenium covered, they stayed put.  But the country they lived in kept changing.

Rebecca serenading diners at Tangelo's Grille in Gulfport, FL

I was lucky enough to be here when Rebecca opened last night at Tangelo’s Grille in Gulfport, FL.

Tangelo’s is a long-time downtown St. Petersburg Caribbean eatery that moved a couple months ago to a seaside spot in Gulfport.  It’s owned by our friends, Mike and Lisa Brennan, and they invited Rebecca to perform.  Lisa’s mom, Gloria Abrams, who’s been a Rebecca fan from the very beginning, joined us.

It was quite a set Rebecca put on — from 6:30 until about 8:30, with a couple of short breaks to rest her voice.

The strumming and the singing got a lot of attention, some applause from people passing by on the sidewalk, one cellphone picture snap, and one autograph signing.  Not bad for a night’s work.  It also got Rebecca an invitation to return to Tangelo’s with her guitar next Saturday night, when I unfortunately won’t be here to see it… but maybe you can be.

Master Sgt. Jamie D. Revis and Maj. David Schreiner of the 26 Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) cut the cake with a K-bar knife during a Marine Corps birthday ceremony on the flight line at Pano Aqil Cantonment, Pakistan, today. (USMC photo)

Today is the 235th birthday of the United States Marine Corps.  To celebrate, I figured I’d share one of my favorite stories about this fabled fighting force.

Twenty years ago, when I was working at KNBC in Los Angeles, we’d host a contingent of Marine officers each year for some kind of leadership conference.  Usually, on the final day of their visit, they’d be sent to one of the “business units” to observe.  In the newsroom, we’d do a full-day VIP tour for them — out on a story, a visit to the set and control room, lunch in the commissary.

But on one of these visits, an invitation came through for that night to attend Hefner’s introduction of the Playmate of the Year at the Playboy Mansion.  We called Playboy PR and cleared our guests to accompany the crew.  Then, I rounded up my band of lieutenant colonels and explained that although their day was technically over at five o’clock, there was this opportunity at night.  They were immediate and unanimous in accepting.

I explained that there was a transportation problem, that there were four of them and only three seats in the van.  One of the colonels — who had displayed several times that day a sharp wit I wouldn’t have otherwise associated with a career military officer — marched forward and said officiously, “We’re Marine officers, sir.  We’ll improvise.”  And off they went.

The next afternoon, I checked with the shooter who’d taken them to the Mansion, and he told me they’d had a great time, the time of their lives, in fact.  They’d apparently indulged in Hef’s hospitality, made themselves at home at the open bar and ogled the many sights.

A few days later, I received in the mail a kind note from the colonels, and a beautiful silver Cross pen with the Marine’s eagle, globe, and anchor insignia.

And a few days after that, I found in my mailbox an interoffice envelope from the general manager’s office.  I wasn’t in the habit of getting written messages from the GM, so there was some trepidation as I opened the flap to look inside.

It was a copy of a letter from one of the Marines — the one with the runaway sense of humor — thanking the GM for the opportunity to observe a working newsroom and meet so many people.  The last paragraph of the letter really got me.

The colonel explained that he’d spent his adult life defending the Constitution of the United States, but it wasn’t until his evening with us that he’d come to personally understand the overriding importance of the First Amendment.

Semper Fi to the men who fought the Battle of Holmby Hills that night, and to all who have served our country.

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