not so thankless tasks

I finally downloaded the Thanksgiving photos from my camera last night, which got me to thinking about what great friends and family I have and how I am quite thankful to have them. I was also thinking that it's time for me to make more pumpkin bread, which then led me to thinking about Matt Bumstead-- a dear old childhood/high school/college friend whom I have not seen since his wedding in Lubbock, Texas almost ten years ago. He's always loved my pumpkin bread, and I try to send him some each year.

Matt's older brother Gantt has gained some notoriety in this blog, and this blog has gained several loyal readers who found it by Googling "Gantt Bumstead." In fact, Alert Reader (and cousin) Barry Maddux found out about the blog at one of her kid's soccer games from someone visiting from Texas. Lord knows how my name came up in conversation, but when it did, the visitor looked over and said, "You're Wilson Hardcastle's cousin? I love his blog." WTF?

She found it because she is friends with Gantt and found this blog when a Google search on Gantt turned up this post, which mentioned the time he walked naked through a fast food place in high school. When the story got back to me I called Gantt and offered to remove his name from the post, but he's proud of that story and loves that it was referenced.

Matt made a decision a couple of years ago to go off the e-mail grid. Just won't do it. I got an e-mail from his assistant asking for my help. Matt called and asked a favor: His fraternity brother/friend Scott, who was on my freshman hall, recently lost his mother and asked for help on a project from his niece which needed people to comment on the weather from around the country. Matt agreed to receive the package in the mail, write a bit about the local town and the weather, and then send it on to other cities across the country.

My niece and nephew have both sent such requests to me when they went through the second grade: asking me to mail a weather report from the newspaper and write a little bit about the local weather. But with the fog, the crazy weather here from the ocean and the Bay, and the array of micro-climates in San Francisco, writing about the weather takes several pages.

Matt received the folder from the little girl then promptly forgot to do anything about it. It turns out this was a very important project, to Scott and to his niece, and Matt was scrambling to make things right. Matt is one of the most devout and caring people I know, and he was actually losing sleep over this.

Matt asked me and others to send a post card from San Francisco to her homeroom class (as if we received the package ourselves and were forwarding it on to another city) and then write a short paragraph, just a few sentences, saying who we are, where we are, a little about where we live, and then a sentence or two about the weather. Matt asked to write something up that could be e-mailed to his office, printed out, and then included in the folder which he would send back to the little girl (having collected the notes electronically and printing them out himself rather than sending the folder all over the country--a pretty good plan actually).

I spat out a little stream-of-consciousness paragraph, dropped in a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge I took last Thanksgiving morning, and e-mailed the PDF.

Matt later called and left a lengthy voice mail. He called my cell while we had no service on our trek to the corn maze. I tried to listen to it in the car, but I couldn't get through the whole thing-- one, for lack of service (more bars in more places my ass); and two, I was getting choked up.

Matt is just one of those really stellar, considerate men, and I really appreciated the message. Enough to save it to remind me why I am happy to do the things I do. His is a generous soul, and I do believe we get back what we give.

Here's the letter I sent:

And Matt's message back.

I'm curious. If you had to write only a two sentences (or four) about San Francisco and its weather, what would you say?

Feel free to espouse in the comments.