Author: Debbie Duncan

(October 12, 2020) Listen to the audio version

“Whoa!” my hair stylist said when he looked at my reflection in the mirror of his salon. It was the first of what turned out to be only two days in July he was allowed to operate his business. There I was, masked, hair wet from shampooing at home, more than three months after my last cut-and-color. My hair was shaggy and … no longer all brown. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Yep. Just a haircut, please.” I’d been talking with him for at least a year about how to make a graceful transition to the natural hair color of a woman in her 60’s. Though I liked the brown with summer blond highlights I’d had all my life, I also knew I didn’t want to continue that look into my 70’s and 80’s. Female politicians may feel they have to. I sure don’t. I’m afraid brown hair wouldn’t match my face in the coming decades. Why not see what happens? I can always dye it again.

The pandemic offered the perfect excuse. I couldn’t get into the salon. I also wasn’t attending any events to which I’d rather not show up sporting a skunk stripe on the top of my head. My adult daughters and husband agreed I should go for it. Yet I did appear on Zoom a couple of times a week, and I’m not someone who’s always comfortable with change. My stylist offered to whip up color I could grab, go home and apply myself. Friends and neighbors did that, or bought color kits online or at the drugstore, with varying degrees of success.

Nevertheless, I’ve held out. And I’m not alone. Turns out going silver/white/salt and pepper, or embracing natural hair in general is a pandemic trend. Though I’ve stepped away from social media, I’ve heard there’s a Facebook group for those like me. It’s been kinda fun these months to watch what color grows in. I’d hoped for my cousin’s white, but I think I’ll end up with my brothers’ silver. I never did get that skunk stripe. One more haircut and the brown will be history.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(July 15, 2019)

I was a depressed, privileged 16-year-old California girl exiled to Connecticut because of my father’s job when I convinced my parents to send me to Europe in the summer of 1969 with a student group from my old hometown. For $800—including round trip airfare from L.A.—I toured and studied for six weeks in five countries with 180 high schoolers. We took classes in the morning and sang Beatles ballads in busses while traversing the continent.

I read American news magazines on those trips, devouring articles about the planned landing and moon walk for Apollo 11 astronauts. I’d been obsessed with space as a kid. Growing up, my favorite books were Rusty’s Space Ship and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. My father had helped design the guidance system for Ranger, a spacecraft that took pictures of the moon. I told kids in the back of the bus on our ride from Amsterdam to Paris that I wanted to be an astronaut.

That’s when I figured out that the first moon walk would take place during our second to last night in Paris, broadcast on TV worldwide. Our bare-bones accommodations were modest, to say the least. No TVs. I asked the director of our tour, who’d been the principal of my elementary school, about finding a nearby television. “Nope.”

“Even with a teacher?”

“No one will leave the premises.”

That’s what he thought. I did what any other headstrong, formerly rule-abiding teenager would do: I snuck out with a bunch of like-minded students determined to witness history. I’d located an appliance store in the neighborhood with a bank of TVs facing the window that were always on. And indeed they were on in glorious black and white when we stood on the sidewalk at about five a.m., watching with a group of Parisians while Neil Armstrong stepped out onto Earth’s moon. It. Was. Awesome. My instinct was to look up in the sky, to try to find Apollo.

Dawn was breaking as we walked quietly back to our beds. I had to wait until the busses got to Austria a few days later to find a magazine and read what Armstrong had said about “one small step for man.”

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(May 6, 2019) Hear the audio version

Is your driver license expiring this year? Or are you eager to make your license a Real ID, which Homeland Security is requiring by October 2020 for air travel without a passport? Well, fellow Californian, listen up and get in line. Because in order to be issued a Real ID, you have to show up at the DMV in person. Be prepared to wait.

I began at dmv.ca.gov more than three months before my license was set to expire at the end of April. I was offered an appointment early in the month at a near(ish) DMV, so I grabbed it. I was feeling rather smug to have a Saturday slot, as rumor had it that’s the best day of the week to show up, appointment or not. Unfortunately, I neglected to take care of the second step, an electronic application—filling out details such as my hair color, eye color, height, weight, fun stuff like that which goes on the license. So when I arrived at the DMV and made it to the front of the appointment line, I had to admit to the greeter I did not have a confirmation number. Oops. Forty-five minutes later her coworker sent me to wait for a terminal to complete my application. This I could have done from home.

I was more successful assembling the paperwork needed for a Real ID: proper birth identification; Social Security card (or W-2); and TWO proofs of residency. I also brought my checkbook, as I knew the DMV does not accept credit cards. This was news to the young woman I bonded with in line. I wrote a check for her Real ID as well so she wouldn’t have to return. I got back in the terminal queue to pass an online driver test, required because I’d had several renewals by mail.

More Californians interact with the DMV than with any other state office. The “reinvention” Governor Newsom promised should include upgrading technology. Accepting modern forms of payment. Hiring more staff and giving them a raise. How about re-opening some offices? And please, hire a permanent director who will make the DMV the efficient service we Californians deserve.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(January 30, 2019) Hear the audio version

Quick! What was the biggest disaster in the history of the state of California? Not the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed much of San Francisco, or last fall’s Camp Fire, which devastated the town of Paradise. It was a flood, as in the Great Flood of 1861-62, when it rained for 45 days. Normal seasonal rainfall in San Francisco is 22 inches; that year 49 inches fell. Leland Stanford traveled from his Sacramento home to his gubernatorial inauguration by rowboat, as the city was 10 feet under water. It remained flooded for three months.

Entire towns in the Sierra foothills were obliterated as one storm after another slammed California. A settlement of Chinese miners drowned when the Yuba River flooded. Residents reported seeing houses, horses, poultry, cattle, barns, bridges, camps, stores, and saloons swept downstream. Hills everywhere became landslides. The Central Valley completely flooded—an inland waterway 300 miles long and 20 miles wide wiped out nearly every house and ranch. No one knows how many thousands of humans died, but at least 200,000 cattle drowned. It took one season for California to switch from a ranching economy to a farming one—when it recovered. The state declared bankruptcy following the Great Flood.

Rains like this will happen again. Geologists have determined that megafloods hit California every one- to 200 years. And that’s without climate change! We have better flood-control infrastructure now than in the nineteenth century, but dams don’t always hold, and there are a lot more people today on those hills, plains and valleys. Yet unlike the big earthquake everyone expects but cannot precisely predict, meteorologists know days in advance about these atmospheric rivers that build in the Pacific. Pay attention to the scientists. Don’t be surprised when history repeats itself. And whatever you do, if you see a flood, turn around, don’t drown.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(September 19, 2018) Hear the audio version

One cool October morning twenty years ago, I ate a bowl of oatmeal by the window in a hotel restaurant in Sedro Woolley, Washington the day of my aunt’s memorial service. She had been a middle school librarian. Appropriately, I was reading a book, a new book that would change my life. I was, and still am, a children’s literature advocate. In 1998 I was promoting a book I had written about reading and kids. Joy of Reading includes lists of great books. And when I began reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I knew my book was already out-of-date. I couldn’t have been happier.

Here was an instant classic, a novel with darn-near universal appeal. What kid wouldn’t want to read about 11-year-old Harry’s escape from his evil relatives and into the wizarding world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a boarding school in a castle where students climb through portraits to get from one place to another? Harry acquires an invisibility cloak to help him sneak out at night in order to battle the dark wizard. He plays a sport called Quidditch, on a broomstick. And one of his best friends is a girl, the brilliant and spirited Hermione Granger. I looked forward to getting home and reading Harry Potter to my eight-year-old daughter. She’s thanked me ever since.

Soon I learned that J.K. Rowling had six more novels mapped out for the series. Seven Harry Potters? I could talk about these books for years! And I have. I promoted them as family read-alouds, filled with enough imagination and old-fashioned story-telling to entertain readers and listeners of all ages. They’re a perfect gateway to books of all sorts. New Harry Potters were ushered in with midnight release parties at bookstores and libraries, where kids could find even more books. (We kidlit people are tricky like that.)

Before long the Harry Potter brand extended to movies, conventions, theme parks. A generation has grown up knowing “The Boy Who Lived.” More than 500 million Harry Potters are in print and still selling strong in 80 languages. Universal appeal? You bet.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(June 26, 2018) Hear the audio version

What does summer taste like? I thought I’d have to dig deep for my answer, because many of the foods I remember from my 1950’s and 60’s childhood summers came out of a can or a freezer pouch—peaches, green beans, even corn. To be honest, those flavors kinda blended together. So did the taste of cherries when they swam with other bits of so-called fruit in a syrupy sauce poured out of a can and called fruit cocktail. My midcentury space-age suburban family did not eat seasonally or locally.

But we did have a station wagon. And one of my dad’s favorite things to do after dinner on summer evenings was drive my brothers and me to the new Southern California drug store, Sav-on, for ice cream cones: 5 cents for one scoop, 10 for two. I had a feeling Mom didn’t approve of Dad eating ice cream, but when he was out with us, he indulged in his favorite flavor, chocolate chip. I always ordered strawberry—two scoops of creamy strawberry ice cream melting over a sugar cone.

I’d forgotten about that glorious taste of summer until a couple of weeks ago, when I tested a recipe for something called strawberry milk: cut farmers market strawberries up into a blender and sprinkle with sugar. Stir them a few times over the next hour until nice and goopy, then puree until smooth. Add good, whole milk and … buttermilk. Stir. Let the mixture steep in the fridge overnight, and oh my goodness! The result is summer in a glass. It’s two scoops of circa 1965 Sav-on strawberry ice cream eaten on a warm summer evening in the rear-facing seat of the station wagon, minus the cone. (I’ve gone gluten-free.) It’s undoubtedly healthier than its 1960’s version: it has buttermilk. I make it for myself, I make it for my family, I will make it for anyone who comes through my kitchen for as long as strawberry season lasts. Strawberry milk takes me back while also providing comfort. And I and most people I know can use a few sips of solace this summer.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(May 2, 2018) Hear the audio version

Last month I read an article about an industrial safety technique used by Japan’s rail workers. Shisa kanko, or, in English, “pointing-and-calling,” reduces workplace errors by up to 85 percent. The method involves looking at an object, pointing at it, calling out the procedure, and listening to the call. Speed check? Point at the speedometer, call out the speed, hear that call, safely move on. My friend who recently returned from Japan watched train conductors sweep white-gloved hands through the air while calling out safety checks to no one in particular. Fascinating!

I haven’t been a train conductor since I spent Sunday afternoons in my grandparents’ Whittier basement running locomotives through the towns of Grandpa’s elaborate homemade train set. However, I wondered if pointing-and-calling could help me remember if I, say, locked the front door at night, or turned off a burner. How about close the garage door? I have been known to drive around the block to make sure I closed that darn door, because doing so is so rote. Now after I back out of the garage, I point at the door, punch the remote, call out “Closed the garage door!” and watch it go down. I feel a little silly, but I also don’t drive around the block anymore.

I now point and speak out loud to many of my appliances, as well as prescription bottles, my puppy’s supper dish … lots of things. By engaging multiple senses while performing routine tasks I’m increasing awareness and reducing the chance of error. Paying close attention to what I’m doing is the opposite of multitasking, which humans apparently aren’t very good at anyway. That’s why texting while driving any vehicle is so dangerous. The L.A. Metrolink train crash in 2008 that killed 25 was caused by an engineer running a red light while texting. Those Japanese rail workers aren’t even allowed to carry cell phones. Another good idea!

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.

(December 13, 2017) Hear the audio version

The tradition of Christmas cards has taken a big hit from the digital age, but Debbie Duncan keeps it up because the rewards are many and unexpected.

The mailman delivered twice a day in December to my Southern California suburban home in the 1950’s. Morning and afternoon I helped my mother open hand-addressed Christmas greetings, and add the cards and photographs to our collection strung over the fireplace—everyone from my cousins in Sedro Woolley, Washington to Red the Butcher down the street.

Personalized holiday greetings and I go way back, in other words. And I’ve kept it up, though years ago I stopped assuming all of my recipients celebrate Christmas. I know they do not. We try to include a family photo. My clever, funny husband writes a letter. I address the envelopes. I realize labels are more efficient (I tried that one year), but I like to show that a human hand was part of the process. I don’t need two snail-mail deliveries a day, but I don’t mind buying Forever stamps forever in order to continue to receive those cards and letters.

Going through my torn, tattered, 20-year-old address book is an annual reminder of family and friends who have died. There’s no “delete” in my book; just crossed-out names. I have more notes scribbled in the margins than Senators put in the tax bill—notes such as referring to one family as our “misplaced Kansas relatives.” They have their same last name as my husband’s sister. For some reason one year our card was delivered to their Kansas home rather than hers. So they sent one back to us. Instant long-distance friendship! I’ve watched their boys grow up, as they have our girls. I smile every time I write to them.

This year I’ll be adding several families I also have not met. They live closer, in the North Bay. Most lost their homes in the October fires. I know of them because they had the grace to send me thank-you notes for the small gift cards I sent up to Santa Rosa when I wanted to do something—anything—to help fire survivors. They told me they belong to a Bible study group. I will wish them Merry Christmas, and remember them every year when I write their names.

With a Perspective, I’m Debbie Duncan.