Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, relationships, grooming and more.
RN: Claude, riddle me this: Why do we live here?
CP: Because the life worth living is made up of contrasts and comparisons, as we learned when we were asked to write our first compare-and-contrast essay in the seventh grade. Only by living in Minnesota are we able to turn that C&C game into an extreme sport.
RN: Great. So what if you're not good at sports? Where are you, by the way? I haven't seen you here at the plant in three days.
CP: I'm chatting with you from Berkeley, where this morning my view is from the Moorish fantasy that is the City Club on Durant Street, in the shadow of the legendary University of California, Berkeley campus. I look out my window and see, in order from nearest to farthest: a bird on a sill, a flowering tree of some kind, a Spanish style church steeple, the low buildings of the neighborhood, San Francisco Bay, the city of San Francisco getting its first sun, more water, and Golden Gate Bridge. If I had come here from, say, Virginia, I would not have the contrast that makes this so sweet.
RN: Sure, go ahead, rub it in. Kick my Seasonal Affective Disorder while it's down. Or up. You know what I mean.
CP: March is a time, back home, that tries men's souls. This year, instead of the pasqueflower abloom on south- facing hillsides, and the crocuses apeeking in the yard, we had another two dumps of wet snow. I've learned that in most years, even April kinda sucks. Why, it's so temperate here that even the junkies gathered at the needle exchange at the church parking lot next to the hotel (it is Berkeley, after all) are wearing light jackets.
RN: Sigh. The last time I wore a light jacket was when I was in Texas two weeks ago, and I gladly would have traded my pension -- wait, do we still have one? -- to keep from returning to this overcast, snowbound, Godforsaken place. And sprawled-out Houston doesn't exactly crack my top 10 favorite snowbird destinations list.
