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Remembering Avis Hacker

I’m sorry to share that Avis Jean (Evergreen) Hastings-Hacker merged with the Great Beyond last night at around 8:30 last night. She had recently spent four months in a convalescent home, dealing with growing symptoms of CHF, until recently she opted to return to our home in Morro Bay to do home hospice. She went peacefully last night after years of discomfort at 83. I want to appreciate her for making our lunches, minimizing our TV time as kids, making us eat carob and putting sunflower seeds and raisins in our waffles. I appreciate that she mended our clothes and made our halloween costumes by hand, and ran a tight ship. She loved Carole King and Joni Mitchell and Maria Muldaur and Helen Reddy, and was always up for our family’s whacky adventures, whether it was raising raccoons or cruising down to Tijuana in the family’s VW microbus, she was there for it. She was a real-life Tupperware Lady, a Reiki massage therapist, and ran three retail stores over the years: The Hunny Pot knick-knacks in Atascadero in the 70s, New Moon boutique in Cambria in the 80s, and Earth Spirt native artifacts in Morro Bay in the 90s. Much of her story has been complex and painful – the truth of her life is a submerged iceberg. She was the last living child (7/7!) of Vada and Chalmers Hastings – that generation has now come to a close, but the younger Hastings carry on. She is survived by her husband Jim Hacker, and her sons Scot and John. Farewell, Mom – may you finally enjoy peace.

I’ve put together a photo album with images of her from childhood until recently.

https://adobe.ly/4gnjgnp

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On the Road with Lightroom and iPad

Just back from traveling in Scotland for a couple of weeks, and this time I went without a computer – Just Lightroom Mobile on iPad. I encountered a bunch of caveats and ended up writing this guide at Framespotting for people who want to try the same – you’ll want to plan and practice to make this work well! Sorry about the dorky Gemini illustration.

https://framespotting.substack.com/p/on-the-road-with-lightroom-and-ipad

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Adventures in the Land of El Maximo

In 1993 the web was “invented” and I’ve posted pretty much everything significant in my life since then. But a few days ago, I came across a photocopied travel diary in a box in the garage – something I had written that same year about a trip I’d taken to Cuba with Ingrid Schorr to participate in their International Film Festival. I realized that somehow I’d managed never to post this on the original Birdhouse Arts Collective, and very few people have ever seen it. I got a bee in my bonnet, had the original photographs digitized at A1 Labs in Berkeley, chatted with Ingrid about our memories from that trip, and yesterday put it all together in HTML for the first time. This is also the first new content I’ve added to the original Birdhouse in a very long time.

http://archive.birdhouse.org/words/scot/cuba/

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One Year In

Hard to believe it’s been a full year since May 2025, when I finished my 7-week round of chemo-radiation sessions for throat cancer. It’s traditional to bang a gong to celebrate the end of radiation treatment, but I was up for something more than the 10″ gong in the Kaiser radiology lab, and borrowed this beautiful gong from a local sound treatment specialist, and organised an outing to Albany Bulb. Amy shot this wonderful image of me celebrating the last day of radiation.

Photo by Amy Kubes

It’s been a wild ride since, grappling with an array of side effects and symptoms. Neuropathy that’s manifested as “stockings and gloves” – tingling in the hands and feet – slowly rising and then settling down over the past year. Loss of salivation and sense of taste – another one that’s come back somewhat over the past year, but not entirely. I still have a Xylimelt saliva-encouraging tablet in my mouth at all times. For a while, it seemed like I would be permanently down 30 pounds, but some of that weight has come back, for better and for worse.

And then there’s the late-arriving symptom that has been particularly problematic: Tinnitus in the left ear from radiation that swiped its way over the left side of my face every day for almost two months — sometimes the persistent ringing almost turns to howling, and it’s incredibly annoying. I know there’s literally nothing that can be done about tinnitus, and that visits to the doctors will only result in “coping strategies” (I’ve been down this road with it before) so I haven’t talked to the doc about this. I just live with it.

Another big one is not so much a symptom as it is a result – I lost a fair bit of muscle mass in my butt and thighs, and with it, lost some stamina while cycling. I just can’t do the distances and speeds I used to do. With diligence, I’m sure I could bring some of it back over time, but it’s going to take a lot of work, and honestly I’m feeling fine about shorter and less-frequent rides – distance cycling is so time consuming!

Other than that, it’s pretty much normal life again now. I’m back to working 3/4 time, leaving just enough time each day to work on my images and frames. And I still hike in local hills around 5 miles/day, before and after work – proud to say I never stopped my daily walks even through the thick of treatment. It feels like a life-long-habit that I intend to do forever, through several more dogs.

Every three months I go to see my oncologist, who does a visual check for recurrence of tumours by anaesthetising my nostril and pushing in a camera to look down from the top. So far, so good. No signs. And in the process I’ve learned my oncologist is both a snowboarder and a Deadhead, like me. Life is good.

The type of cancer I had was caused by the HPV virus. When I was young, there was no vaccine for it. Today, we’re incredibly fortunate that young people can be vaccinated for HPV, and need never risk contracting this sort of cancer. If you have teenage kids, please PLEASE vaccinate for HPV. Your future self will thank you.

Happy anniversary, me. Well done.

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Apple Recipes

A hidden gem of the MacOS/iOS ecosystem that doesn’t get nearly enough credit is the almost hidden recipes database. In the News app sidebar, go to Food, then Recipe Catalog. They reformat tens of thousands of recipes from dozens of recipe sites and format them in a consistent way, with exactly the same layout and no embedded nonsense – just the stuff you need to know. Perfect for cooking with an iPad open, and you can save favorite recipes to your personal catalog.

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Exploring Kelp Entanglements at San Simeon

Thanks everyone for your feedback on my “Kelp Entanglements” series! Over at Framespotting, I’ve just turned the set into a photo essay with some background info and musings. I enjoyed encountering these post-storm kelp piles in this light, and while they were fresh – hoping to share some of the experience.

https://framespotting.substack.com/p/exploring-kelp-entanglements-at-san

Walking the beach at San Simeon toward the bluffs after this winter’s big storm, we encountered enormous tangles of uprooted kelp on the beach, with its endless permutations of bulb, leaf, stalk, knot, wrap, nest.
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Fresh-ground vs pre-ground coffee

After years of hearing that fresh-ground coffee tastes better than pre-ground, I finally got around to setting up a family taste test. Purchased two bags of Peet’s Major Dickison’s Dark Roast with the same expiration date (one bag ground and one whole bean), used a burr grinder to grind some of the beans to the same coarseness as the pre-ground, and did a pour-over cup of each with same water at the same temperature. I knew which one was which, but Amy and Millie did not (semi-blind test). Conclusion: None of us were able to detect much of a difference – certainly not enough to warrant the hassle of grinding beans fresh every day. Of the tiny difference notes we did come away with, one of us found the pre-ground slightly more aromatic, one of us felt that way about the whole beans, and one found no difference at all. I know a lot of people feel very passionately about this, but I remain convinced that much of it comes down to a love for the ritual (I get that!). I’m sure there are people with palettes fine enough to notice differences that we could not, but we have now conclusively decided that none of us are those people.

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Patti Smith at the Masonic – Horses Turns 50

She didn’t do her usual lecture about the importance of maintaining good dental hygiene, but Patti Smith at the Masonic (“My Sonic”) last night did rock the entirety of “Horses” (which just turned 50), and it was glorious. Birdland has always been my favorite track from that album – epic original Beat poetry set to a rocking dirge – and it sounded even better than the album version, IMO. Amazing to learn that “Break It Up” was inspired by a dream Patti had written in her notebook about walking out of a forest and into a clearing, where there was a marble statue with a butterfly inside. Patti realized the butterfly was the ghost of Jim Morrison and was encouraging it to break out of the statue – “Break it up! Break it up!” I loved how lovingly she narrated the experience of turning the record over and dropping the needle on side 2, when they got to that part of the performance. Amazing rendering of “Because the Night” toward the end. She talked some about her relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith and it got me wondering – Patti was already a Smith before meeting Fred, who was also a Smith. She rocked so hard I mostly forgot how old she was – 79, if my math is right. May we all keep the freak flag flying like Patti.

Audience at Horses
Patti Smith and band performing Horses
Patti Smith and band performing Horses
The amazing mosaic in the lobby of the Masonic
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All Clear!

When my treatment ended in late May, the next question became “How can we be sure if we got it all?” The surprising answer was “There’s so much swelling during treatment, and it’s too easy to mistake swelling for tumors, so we have to wait three full months before doing another PET scan.”

That day finally came yesterday. Half an hour on my back in the giant scanner (this one silent, unlike the crazy noisy MRI) and then a 24-hour wait for analysis. Today I met with the head of oncological surgery at Kaiser for the analysis. Short version: All clear! No sign of any tumor remains in my head, neck, or throat, and all former tumors are thoroughly dead and gone (or withered to nothing).

It’s hard to describe what it felt like to get this news, after everything we’ve been through since last March when I was first diagnosed. Saying “I’m cancer free” makes me start to tear up a bit now, just like saying “I’ve got cancer” did six months ago.

I knew in advance that my P-16+ variant responds very well to chemo-radiation, and that my chances were very good for full recovery, but that glimmer of doubt always remained in the back of my mind, making me nervous that I could have been in for a series of recurring cancers or something. I know that not all cancer patients are nearly this lucky, and I feel incredibly grateful to be at this point.

I’ll have to visit the doctor every three months for the next year, and then every six months for several years after to be sure, but for now, it appears we are out of the woods. Unfortunately that’s not quite the case with my remaining symptoms:

  • Foggy headed / issues with word recall
  • Low red & white blood cell count, plus platelets = low energy, dizzy spells, etc.
  • Weight loss (I’m still down 30 lbs, and having trouble putting any back on!)
  • Cotton mouth due to nuked saliva glands (this will get somewhat better over time, but is going to be more or less permanent)
  • Sense of taste still only restored to around 50%

But the doctor was optimistic about every single one of those as well, and in fact thought I was doing incredibly well on each of those five counts for being only at the three-month mark.

So… huzzah! I didn’t quite jump and click my heels on the way out of there, but felt like it.

I just want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all of the love and support you’ve shown over the past six months. It’s been an incredible ride that I never foresaw myself, but I’m pretty much out the other side now, and incredibly grateful – to my family, to my extended circle of friends,  to medical science, and to at least one example of fantastic health care in the U.S.