Adventure Saturday #1 - The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa

First a little background: Consider this Season Two of Adventure Saturday. Season One was about four years ago and it was a video blog of my various "Saturday" adventures. I shot about six episodes, but I could never find a narrative that I liked in all that footage. It's probably something I'll throw on the website Archives section before too long. In the first season I visited Central Idaho for fishing on the Salmon River, Boot Jack Trail out of Muir Woods in Marin, Land's End Trail in San Francisco, Butano State Park near Pescadero, and took an Alaskan Cruise.

I always liked the idea of Adventure Saturday though and I recently realized that I was still going on these Saturday adventures even if I wasn't filming them. So I decided to continue the idea via blog. And now that you're caught up... on with Season Two.

This last Saturday, my brother and I decided to travel to far away Santa Rosa (60 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge) for a visit to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Neither of us had ever been to the Museum, so it was going to be a first time adventure for both of us.

Unfortunately we got off to a slow start on Saturday and by the time we reached our usual Marin breakfast place at The Bayside Cafe in Sausalito/Marin City, the restaurant parking lot was full. I had to skip my wonderful waffle and bacon and try to enjoy a McDonald's breakfast burrito at the nearby Seminary Drive location - definitely not an even exchange. However, we used the time at McDonalds to wisely download the directions to the museum onto our smart phones. And then, once we were done eating, off we went.

Depending on the traffic, driving north through Marin can either be a delight or a pain in the ass. Most Saturday's, however, its usually a nice drive. That was definitely the case this Saturday as it took us only a little over an hour to cover the 60 miles to Santa Rosa. Once off the exit, it was easy to follow the signs to the Museum which is located about ten blocks from the freeway.

The Museum is actually three buildings and two different parking areas. The first building you come to is a gift shop with all things Peanuts related. The second building is the Redwood Empire Ice Skating Rink that also houses the Warm Puppy coffee shop. In between these two buildings is the first parking area which mostly serves the ice skaters that are coming to the rink. The third building houses the museum itself and there is a museum specific parking lot behind the museum. All parking is free.

The Museum is two stories tall and has a courtyard in back and a garden/maze out front. Inside the museum there is a theater that shows Peanuts related cartoons all day long and also serves as a meeting space for guest speakers and artists. There is also a small museum specific gift shop off the main lobby. The rest of the museum is devoted entirely to the Peanuts and to its creator, Charles Schulz.

The first floor of the museum has a couple of rotating galleries of Peanuts strips as they relate to particular topics. On our trip, the first gallery was showing The Peanuts and Women In Sports, which covered how Charles Schulz and the Peanuts gang were strong advocates of Title IX and other women in sports. The second gallery was all about the Peanuts and Travel showing all the various strips where Snoopy went on visits to places all over the world and what prompted the travel.

The second floor of the museum is devoted to the life of Charles Schulz. In addition to the creation of the Peanuts, there is an excellent timeline of his life, many displays of the influences on his career, and finally, his entire office is preserved for you to see. The man had an excellent library.

There is a short film on the first floor that talks about the creation of the museum, but also gives some interesting facts on the daily life of Charles Schulz in Santa Rosa. He used to eat breakfast at the Warm Puppy Cafe and then go back to his house to work before heading back to the cafe for lunch and for a chance to watch the ice skaters on the rink. He also started and hosted an International Seniors Hockey Tournament every year and usually participated with his own team. This year the Tournament will draw over 50 teams from all over the world!

For lunch, I walked over to the Ice Skating Rink and went to the Warm Puppy Cafe and ordered a Tuna Fish sandwich - just like Charles Schulz used to eat every single day. There was a table still reserved for this kind and gentle genius. Outside the ice skating rink and cafe, many of the top ice skaters in the world have been invited to sign their name in the cement. It was fun to walk around the rink and find all the names of my favorites.

The entire museum would have taken all day to go through. Each of the strips are the normal original artwork size - about 1 by 3 feet and certainly easy enough to read. There are hundreds of them and plenty of information behind their design, and back story. That and all those wonderful Peanuts specials playing in the theater and you could easily get lost in Peanuty goodness. We decided to save something for our next visit.

The drive back was just as pleasant and we ended our Adventure Saturday with a nice drive down the Great Highway.

Next Saturday, we're headed to the Hiller Air Museum on Highway 101 near San Carlos. If you're interested in meeting us there, let me know.

I find my lack of faith disturbing...

First of all; the new website will not stop me from posting. Website is creative. Blog - decidedly less creative ;) But that brings me to my next blog post...

In cataloging all of the myriad projects I'm working on, I often give short shrift to the religious aspects of my life. Currently if I add up the long list of items that I do for my faith it might seem like a formidable pile o' stuff. Besides being an active church attender (a feat in and of itself in this hectic world), I am an active Church Elder and have recently been participating in the church on the regional level (San Francisco Presbytery) and the local level (San Francisco Urban Ministry group). Beyond that, I am a member of the choir and the bell choir, and am still an active participant in the Kenya Children Mission Project. As for other projects, I am still editing my KCMP video and am re-writing my church's Lenten play on the Last Supper. It seems like a lot except when stacked against all the other things I do.

Recently the KCMP has been discussing the disciplines we pledged ourselves to do as part of our solidarity with the Kenyan children and also as a way to seek a closer relationship with God. Of these disciplines, I do exactly NONE on a daily basis. On a monthly basis, I maybe do two or three. Despite having all of these "projects" that I do for my Church and for my God, when it comes to my own personal relationship with Christ, I really don't have much of one.

What it really comes down to is that fact that I lay my relationship down so that I can deal with "real" things and not intangible things that are little more than hocus pocus and wishful thinking. Prayer? Really? What does that accomplish? I be quiet and think things to an imaginary presence in my mind. That's not entirely true, of course. I've seen God's power in real life. I've felt his answers to prayer before. And yet, when push comes to shove and I need to decide whether to pray or whether to "accomplish" something, I choose my own power over God's every single time. My faith in God, it seems, only applies when I'm so far in over my head that I have nowhere else to turn.

It makes me wonder whether I am just human and flawed and failed or if I should be applying more effort to the task of turning my WHOLE life over to Christ and not just the parts that I can't do myself. Perhaps its a bit of both. God clearly wants me to write... He wouldn't have given me a talent for it otherwise. But at what point do I stop writing for me and starting writing for Him?

I will be returning to my disciplines in the near future and I hope that you'll find the time to pray for me so that I might discover the time to pray as well. In the meantime, God, can you please allow me to be reminded every once in a while of your awesome power? (I fear the answer to this question... and that shows that my faith is active).

I Get Knocked Down...

So the extremely brief "relationship" ended before it really got started. I'm not angry about that, just sad because it didn't work out. Still, I'm not sure it would have worked anyway. What I find depressing about the entire experience is the cumulative nature of my defeats. It can feel, at times, that I'm always on the losing end of life.

But I think that's what makes human's human. Its not our victories, its our defeats. Its not our triumphs, but our failures. That the ultimate human being humbled himself to the point of being convicted and sentenced to death while being blameless in anything shows us this dichotomy - fully human (can't get much more of a fail than being rounded up by a mob, beaten up, star in a gloriously fake sham trial, sentenced to death and killed in just about the most gruesome manner possible), and fully God (and yet, at any moment, He could have stopped the sun in the sky, breathed on any person in Jerusalem and turned them to dust, or called down an entire army of angels to not only save Himself but to destroy anyone that might have sought to harm Him). He didn't. He died. He allowed Himself to be murdered - brutally - and with all the weight of the greatest empire the world has ever known behind the murderers. Talk about your ultimate perspective test. Compared to crucifixion, everything else seems pretty hunky-dory.

Time to soldier on. I can pick myself up. Dust myself off. And move on to bigger and better things. For a guy who draws on his past so often in writing stories, I sure don't like to live there.

Oh, and what a perfect time to plug my revamped web-site. It's simple. It's straight-forward. And so far, it is filled entirely with new content. So go there to read my billion dollar franchise idea (Die, Bond, Die), or to see my new teaser trailer or behind the scenes look at The Amazing Mole Too, or to read up on the other projects winding their way forward (like my Kenya Children's Mission Project DVD - so almost done! - and my Folk Music documentary). Here is the website: www.tacopdet.com

Enjoy!

How empty are you?

From Journey Inward, Outward, and Forward - the radical vision of the Church of the Savior by Jeff Bailey:

The breaking free of our "addiction to the culture" is something the Church of the Savior gives great attention to. Says Gordon: "Most of us are living, to some degree, as addicted persons, striving anxiously after power and money and prestige and relevance, trapped in the turbulence of wanting more. These addictions are so subtle for most of us that we have the illusion of being free people when in actuality we are immersed in society's expectations. We have given ourselves to God, but who decides what we do with our lives? Usually, we do. We are subtle control freaks, truly believing we are turning over to God but demanding a minimum of comforts, whether it be good health or a secure home or caring friends. We are addicted to having more and more comfort, which society says we deserve."

"We are addicted to things that money and power can buy. We spend more on entertainment and pet care and toiletries that on the needs of children barely existing in poverty; we strive after positions that seem important in our jobs and churches, whether or not God is calling us to them; we long to be noticed and honored, superficially if necessary. We forget that Jesus, 'though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.' Our culture promotes a constant filling up, but our disciplines will draw us toward greater emptiness, so that we can be better prepared for obedience and, ultimately, for finding our place in God's plan - finding true relevance."

Convicted.

I constantly have to remind myself that the name of this blog is ICON... as in, I con nobody but myself. It is easy to take a trip to Kenya and ride that wave of self-righteous feeling for a few years. I've DONE my part. I'm so far ahead of all those Wall Street capitalists! But the reason I feel the way I do about Kenya was precisely because I did empty myself (and my bank account ;) to make that journey. It was an act of faith. But, so what? Did I remain empty?

No, I filled myself up with lots of other non-Christian junk. This is my own doing really. My re-immersion into American culture was part and parcel with my Kenyan transformation. As one made me more aware of the plight of third world countries in a way that has to be experienced, the other was a reminder to myself that I live in the greatest country on Earth and, gosh darn it, it's good to be king. (Hmm... I just had a thought. I have a character in the novel I'm writing describe someone just like me (in a poor light, to be sure). Maybe I was channeling some of my internalization?)

I realize now that I've been coasting. I've been going back to the world when I had gone so far to remove myself from it. Its time to rededicate my life to God's purpose... again... for the zillionth time. I hope I haven't used up my 70 times 7 Forgiveness Plan yet.

The Nicholas Sparks Formula... in reverse...

Everyone knows the Nicholas Sparks formula. For an author that has written such modern love stories as The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and Nights in Rodanthe, the formula is pervasive and yet never seems to limit the enjoyment of the story. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl fall in love. Tragedy befalls Boy (or Girl). Love endures.

Now normally I'm not one who thinks of formulas as being anything other than author-made shapings of the universe to serve a creative need. Nicholas Sparks writes to his formula because, quite frankly, it makes him gazillions of dollars. I wish I had thought of this formula years ago. However, in my case, I have quite a different formula in mind - one that actually happens... in real life... to me... every single time.

I call it my curse. It goes something like this. Boy meets girl (or is set up on a blind date... either way). Boy and girl agree to go out. Boy shows up and... tragedy befalls... always... on first date. It's actually comical in some ways.

So, after many years of avoiding this curse, I finally met someone that I thought it would be fun to hang out with. Now came the tricky part. I had to figure out a way to hang out together without bringing the curse. I very carefully phrased the invitation as a friendly affair - two chums kicking back for a nice lunch and a movie. Totally casual. Everything cool. Best buds. Nothing more, oh fates... nothing more.

Well, to make a long story short, Fate wasn't fooled. On Saturday, I drove over to pick up my "Not-A-Date!" for our little friendly adventure. She was waiting for me out in front of her apartment looking rather beautiful in a white sweater and pants. I pulled up in front and unlocked the door... and in her eagerness to get started on our not-date, she reached down and yanked open the door so fast that it smacked her right in the face.

I was horrified. Was she okay? She climbed into the car and sat down and checked herself out - a small gash on her face, a tiny amount of blood, and a lot of embarrasment, but other than that, she was fine. It was only then that I realized that the curse had struck again. No matter how much I was trying to pretend that this wasn't a full on date, no matter how much I was trying to keep hidden the fact that I liked her potentially as more than just a friend, Fate had seen right through my obfuscating shenanigans and walloped my date with the curse anyway.

Needless to say, I laughed. It was a mixture of relief that she was okay and a realization that fate was confirming that this was, in fact, a date. Besides which, if I was going to have the curse hit, the first ten seconds of a date are infinitely preferable to the last ten seconds.

We had a great lunch at a Japanese restaurant. Then we went to see "Hugo" at a local movie theater. Afterward, I drove her to the mall where she needed to get her sunglasses repaired and then I took her home. No other calamity befell our adventures for the day - in my book that almost counts as a perfect first date.

Now, next time, I will lock the car door, get out of my car, and come around and open the door for her. Of course, fate is tricky. Who knows what else might happen? Stay tuned...

Overcoming and Forgiving (Lord, its not easy being cool...)

I used to drink the kool-aid. My Dad's first computer was a TRS-80 - the first home computer on the market. It wasn't a toy, but I played with it all the same. He taught me how to program. When I went to Jr. High, they had just been given a grant of brand new Apple II's. None of the teachers knew what the hell to do with a computer. Apple was aggressively trying to capture the education market. They placed the computer in the library where, you know, the nerds hung out. I taught many of the school's teachers how to program the Apple Computers. They were sleek, star treky cool. It was a love affair - a doomed love affair, as it turned out.

All through high school I was an Apple lover. I had my own personal Apple IIe that I loved to death. I would be up until all hours of the morning typing away all my great stories and an occasional homework assignment. When I graduated from high school, my Apple IIe went with me to college and then to the Navy. I plunked away on it and thought that our love would never end. When my printer finally crapped out while I was stationed in Hawaii, I bought a brand new one. It was like taking my cherry red Lambourghini and making it into a convertible. That was the best printer I've ever owned.

I got out of the Navy and went back to school. Five days after the warranty expired on my great and wondrous Apple printer, it died. BAM! Just like that. I tried to fix it. No luck. I tried to call Apple to see what I could do. They couldn't give me the time of day. I was in despair. I left for Idaho State with my computer and my busted printer and hoped that I could somehow get it working again. That didn't work. So I signed up for an Apple loan to get a new Apple computer and printer... and I was denied. Denied. My love affair was dashed and my sincere love for all things Apple turned into anger, frustration, and then hatred. I refused to use their products ever again.

Today, I read with obvious disgust the news that Apple wants to once again corner the educational market by putting text books on to Ipads. Duh! Naturally! The multi-billion dollar text book industry would be beholden to Apple. It was a real no-brainer for Apple.

But, suddenly, in the midst of all my distrust and long standing hatred for Apple, I had another realization - a glimpse back to that nerdy library loving student in Jr. High playing with his Apple computer during his lunch hour. In a rush of strange feeling and long lost nostalgia combined with a clear vision of students flipping through cool educational software and interactive books on their sleek star-treky type Ipads, I melted. I knew that despite the horrible customer service that I'd received from my favorite computer company years ago, this idea was a perfect one - a synthesis of modern technology and educational reform that is long overdue.

There are problems with Apple's proposal, but the gist of it is dead on. I, for one, think all students in America should be replacing their old text books with Ipad's.

And that's the way forgiveness begins.

Sacrificial Lamb

Something occurred to me yesterday while I was thinking about my play and I wanted to run this past my very smart readers for comment.

Its perhaps not a coincidence that the Last Supper was at the time of a passover meal. Passover, after all, was to be comemmorated annually by the Jews as a remembrance of the fact that God directly intervened to free them from bondage and to begin their journey to the Promised Land. Jews were required to kill a young lamb without defect and spread his blood on the lintel of the door or be killed. God did this to honor the covenant he had made with Abraham.

Jesus, of course, takes the opportunity of the passover feast to create a new covenant with his disciples - a covenant of wine and bread, symbolizing blood and body. Jesus then offers himself up as the young lamb without defect to be sacrificed so that whosoever believes in him shall have everlasting life. This being the final culmination of the law and the prophets.

Anyway, I hope you can get the gist of what I'm saying here. I'm curious to read what you all think about this.