Raise Your Glasses in a Toast, and Then Put Them Right Back On

Young people know how cool eyeglasses are.  They buy them with clear lenses just so they can sport the awesome frames.

People who've worn glasses since an early age because they need them to see also keep them on in a way that shows a sane acceptance of the eyeglasses as part of the image they project. and an  appreciation of the images the eyeglasses let them see!

And then there are people like me who associate glasses with getting older because our eyesight was perfect until we turned forty-five and suddenly Walgreen's was no longer developing film clearly and the mimeograph machine at school was making blurred copies.  (You can tell  how long ago I turned forty-five.)

We are the idiots who whip off our glasses every time a camera comes near.

We are the fools who memorized Dorothy Parker's verse, "Men don't make passes/At girls who wear glasses" and still remember those lines even when we're forgetting so many other things.

I am the fool who wrote this poem:

He took off his glasses, I thought, to appear
More handsome to me, but now I fear
He took off his glasses to see me less clear.

The foolish part of this is the concept that people look better without their glasses.  I adore My Best Friend in Fifth Grade who, when she sees a camera coming, puts ON her glasses.  She knows she looks better with them on.

Now I'm just keeping mine on--all the time, even for photos.

And I'm writing verses like this (to the tune of "Sixteen Going On Seventeen")

I am sixty-nine going on seventy, my eyesight's getting weak.

Let's raise eyeglasses

To no more classes  

We'd rather sing than speak.    

And I've been taking pictures of raised glasses every chance I get.

So...let's raise our glasses to eyeglasses...and then let's see!

Why Everyone Should Marry a Plumber and a Tile Guy (as well as an auto-mechanic)

All my beautiful bathroom needs is a new old valve for the bathtub (where I take the SF equivalent of the sponge bath I took in Tonga, where there was no running water and we realized the preciousness of what we drew from the well).  But they don't make them anymore.

So since January of this year, I've been trying to get a tile guy and a plumber scheduled for the same day or two so once the beautiful tile is removed I won't have a big gape in the wall.

In the meantime, I had a big problem with my kitchen faucet,  and when my local plumber couldn't come right away, I called in a plumber from Ben Franklin, and they came right over.  But guess how much they charged for switching my old faucet with a new one--a task that took them ten minutes?

(I just had a tile guy guess, and you know how people try to go way over so you won't feel bad the way they try to go way under when guessing your age?  He said "Three hundred dollars.")

  They charged me $538.00!

They said they'd be back soon to take care of the bathtub valve.  That was in June.  They came back today, the last day of September.

In the meantime, my regular plumber gave me a lower estimate, as did the tile guy, and a friend who owns 7 houses and knows about this kind of repair arrived yesterday and said they shouldn't be removing the tiles at all but should be going in through the wall behind.

So I called in advance to alert them to my reconsidering.

The plumber and the tile guy from Ben Franklin just left.  The told me that the spout comes out directy in the middle--between the hot and the cold--so they can't just open it up from the back side.  The plumber has to move the spout up.  The tile guy has to chip the tile.  But they still need to mess with the east wall in the dining room, which they say is either sheet rock or plaster.  My friend-who-owns-7-houses says it's plaster.

But she slept through all this.

I told the tile man that I had a second "bid" for $200 to $400 less, depending upon whether he can save the tile, and the tile guy said the tile can't be saved and I should be careful about hiring someone who doesn't do good work.  I said I have confidence in both tile men, but I have a preference for the lower price.  (That's when I asked them to guess how much I paid for the kitchen faucet.)

And that's why we should all marry a plumber and a tile guy as well as an auto-mechanic...although I have to say, knock on steel, that I haven't had any car trouble for a long, long time!

Why

All

Collages: Where I Put Much More Heart than Brain

I know people would rather just get photos--free, right out of the camera photos--not one of my collages, so why do I persist in putting so much heart into what they really don't want?  I know that my collages aren't artistic, but they're democratic because they include everyone.  So what if  all the everyones are too small to be scene?  (I'll keep that accidental spelling.)

I made homemade more than handmade cards and collages because I love doing it.  It's a way of reflecting and revisiting.

So today, when I should have been getting ready for my trip to Spain and NYC, I was working on the 100th birthday party of Kathy and Tom's Aunt Mary.

Water Usage--We Can Measure Our Own

It's possible for us to check our daily use of water in San Francisco by going to myaccount.sfwater.org/

I was curious to see how it varied when my (very nice) tenant wasn't there because he takes showers, and I take baths (with very little water), and he uses the washer more than I do.

After his return we used 153 gallons daily--lower than what the SF Water Department gives as our goal.

But when he was gone, I used an average of 95 gallons a day.  In fact, the highest usage of water for thhat period was the day he left--254 gallons--so I guess he washed his clothes and showered before going.

My usage went from a low of 7 gallons on June 28 to a high of 172.

Do I Dare Be Exact, Just Because I Can Be?

Do I Dare Be Exact, Just Because I Can Be?

Sloane Crosley said she had to get rid of her miniature pony collection just because, were it found after her death, people would just her insane because of it.  There's be no way of explaining the really un-crazy way she happened to have it.

So when I write the exact moment I get up, go to bed, or start deleting unread e-mail, I worry, too.

I'm at the computer when I say at what time I turn to e-mail, and there it is in the bottom right-hand side of the monitor screen:  10:29 AM. 

But will I appear to be a compulsive-obsessive if I write 10:29 instead of the more general and possibly less accurate 10:30?  (Thank God it's just changed, and it really is 10:30!)

I keep a log of my segmented sleep, so I have things like this:

Tuesday, August 25. 

1:34 am down

3:15 am up

7:11 pm down again.

The 3:15 could be judged sane, but not the 1:34  or the 7:11 --unless it's a reference to the store.

Maybe I should just recite that saying, "I'm CDO.  That's the same as OCD but with the letters arranged alphabetically, as they should be."

Is There Mustard on My Beard? What to Do If No Thanks Is Forthcoming

I don't think thank you notes are all about good manners.  I think they are a sign of kindness and connectedness, something we all need.  It isn't a question of debit-credit when we feel wounded not hearing after we felt a connection and wanted to be generous with friends.  

A few weeks ago I wrote about the astonishingly thoughtful thank you note  from a family of three Javier and I had treated to lunch I'd taken around the city.  Father, mother, son each wrote something about what they'd really appreciated.  I feel like having it framed as an example of what we could all do.  (I sometimes send electronic thanks, and I know that's not the same.  I also sometimes sign my name and Javier instead of encouraging him to speak for himself!)

Anyway, after that warming experience, two other friends came to SF, and again we treated to lunch and then I took them around.  I haven't heard from them since, and that was three weeks ago.

These two brothers come from a family with a very diplomatic way of letting you know that you have mustard on your chin.  For years I didn't catch on.  This is how it would go:

Roger:  Tina, do I have mustard on my chin?

Me:  No. 

I'd wonder why he was so often asking questions like that.  Why was he so self-conscious?  Then I found out that this is how it's supposed to go:

Roger:  Tina, do I have mustard on my chin?

Me:  No.  Do I?

Roger:  Well, now that you mention it, I guess you do.

I then wipe the mustard off my chin.

I found out that this was the strategy and intended outcome when they were telling the story of their daughter, who practiced this and one day asked a visitor, "Keith, do I have mustard on my beard?"

Anyway, here's a very satisfying fantasy I have:  I write to Roger.

Dear Roger,

Did I forget to thank you for all you did for us when you were in San Francisco?

Cecil the Lion, Wild Fires, and Green Brilliance News

Going through a pile of newspapers I really found newsworthy, I see a letter to the editor suggesting that our indignation over the Evil Dentist who used money and deception to hunt down a protected lion means "Coveting, Plunder and greed, overspending and wastefulness, the death of innocence--all are beats of the capitalistic drum" but we are "desperate to show that we are not guilty of the same crimes."

These words on the "Insane" wildfire in Lake County..."The ravenous blaze racing through the area may not be a living organism, but fire behaior specialists say the vast oval of flame has been acting like a demon, bolting in all directions, shotting out superheated tentacles and even creating its own weather...the fickle inferno...tripled in size in recent days despite the all-out assault."  The fire has gone in all directions with intensity.  "It's like an amoeba."  It's "spreading on its own without the help of strong winds that would normally be needed...insane fire behavior."

Rome Adventure, 1962, and How to Dress for Dinner

I think I was really trying to get If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, but I got Rome Adventure instead, and I'm not disappointed.

It reminds me that we wore dresses in those days and dressed for dinner.  In Rome Adventure, their dressing for dinner is formal wear--long formal gowns.  When Our Heroine Suzanne Pleshette goes to practice love with Rossano Brazzi, she wears a pink suit with matching pink shoes, and she believes him the way we were supposed to when he says that a woman's main purpose in life was to anchor men--tame the savage beast, and nothing was more precious than a one-man woman.

Queuing Up for MUNI in San Francisco

To my astonishment, when I was leaving Oakland on Wednesday evening around 7:45, people were queuing up for the streetcars!  I've never seen this before, and I was so favorably impressed by this courteous and fair way of approaching boarding.  I remembered Madrid back in the early 1970's when people did that.  Till then I thought only Londoners were so civilized.

This morning I wondered whether this was a new movement, so I Googled "queuing up sf" and found photos of San Franciscans waiting in line--but for Tartine and other such places, not for a MUNI ride.

http://www.7x7.com/eat-drink/get-line-sf-experience-queuing-tartine

Now what I'm wondering is this:  Has this been going on for some time while I, unaware, have been unwittingly breaking in line?  Breaking in lines that I never saw formed?

Evicted from the Tenderloin Museum!

No time now to tell this poignant tale, but I was evicted from the Tenderloin Museum on their opening day--bounced, asked to leave!  I was behaving myself, not making any demands at all or creating a public disturbance. This was after I'd written an e-letter to Randy Shaw to praise his book on the Tenderloin and he had responded so he knew I was a supporter.  I'd also made a $100.00 donation (though I realize later that there was a complication with the Penpal account).

I left but moved back in later.

Lack of Clarity in the Jury Duty Summons

 Those summoned can call beginning the Friday before their summons date to find out whether they need to go in to the courthouse, according to the Summons for Jury Service I received.

I called and got the message that I should call Monday, July 20,2015 after 4:30 PM  "to confirm  that you are required to report."  (It should be "whether you are required to report," I think.  

Anyway, since they didn't say "You are required to report on Monday..." I  decided I was free on Monday, and a friend whose San Francisco City Walk tour I wanted to go on  told me he thought I was right. 

But another friend thought I should double check, so I went online to the website given in the summons,  www.sfsuperiorcourt.org.

The summons said, "Click on the Jury Duty Instructions Link and look for the instruction for our 3-digit group number, which is located in the upper left corner of this summons."

But there was no link saying "Jury Duty Instructions."  There was a "Jury Duty" link, but when I clicked on it, I saw no link for instructions.  I chose "directions," which turned out to be how to get there.

I searched for a "contact us" link but didn't find one, so I'm resorting to blogging it!

Tea and Justice, Tea and Sisters Tea Parlor, Accommodating All Diets

I've been reading Tea and Justice, a perfect accompaniment for my pre-dawn two-hour reading buffet with tea.  This morning I got to thinking about this:

We now have special menus for our guests requesting Vegetarian Tea Trays, Gluten-free Tea Trays, Dairy-free Tea Trays, and Vegan Tea Trays.

http://sistersteaparlor.com/?page_id=80

And that's a place in Kentucky!!!

The Way of Tea and Justice has an extended title:  Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History.   It's written by a minister named Becca Stevens.
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rev-becca-stevens/the-way-of-tea-and-justice/9781455519026/

Open Letter on The Tenderloin and Sunday Street

I'm glad that  Jill Tucker reported on Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I just wish the headlines had been a bit different.  Instead of "Tenderloin's respite from the seedy side," I wish it had been "The Tenderloin shows a changing face." 

Back in the days when I thought SRO meant  Standing Room Only, I went to the Tenderloin only for shows at the Golden Gate and the Exit theater--and maybe for a dip into McDonald's Dirty, Poorly Lit Place for Books at 48 Turk Street. 

But now I know that SRO also  means Single Room Occupancy--something I first learned from a Laotian immigrant in my class at City College when, drawing a map of his neighborhood, he asked me for the English word for "look at naked lady."   Peep shows, the word he was looking for, are much less prevalent in the Tenderloin now than are people like him and his children, refugees who started moving into SROS in the 1970s, after what the Vietnamese call The American War.   In fact, according to the Sunday Streets web site, the Tenderloin houses the highest number of families with children in San Francisco.

I was in the Tenderloin on Sunday with other faculty and staff of City College of San Francisco when a Tenderloin resident pointed towards Eddy Street and said, "School closed!"  We told her that, yes, 750 Eddy Street was closed, but there was another campus.  "Too far!"  She said, and we understood that she didn't yet know about the new location of the Civic Center at 1170 Market Street. 

City College, like Recreation and Parks' Sunday Streets, tries to serve the people in every neighborhood.

When I started volunteering for the CCSF enrollment campaign, which included community based organizations in the Tenderloin, I notice the banners proclaiming, "409 HISTORIC BUILDINGS IN 33 BLOCKS.  YEAH, WE'RE PROUD" beside another banner saying "LIVING IN THE TEN."  Now I've read Randy Shaw's book The Tenderloin and know more about those historic buildings and some good reasons for the residents to feel pride instead of scorn.   Last Sunday I saw a group of people painting "Living in the Ten" in big letters. 

Just as we want to get out the word that City College is open and accredited and has a new location for the center on Eddy Street that was closed so abruptly at the beginning of the year, I'll bet the Tenderloin would like it to be known that they now have a Safe Passage program, leading children on a yellow brick road from home to school and back.  On Sunday Streets I followed that route, more or less, and saw several beautiful community gardens including The Tenderloin National Park on Ellis Street.  I also saw  the site for the extension of the 826 Valencia writing project  at 172 Golden Gate near Leavenworth and the site for the Tenderloin Museum, which opens this Thursday at 398 Eddy Street.

The Tenderloin really does have a changing face and a fascinating history.  

Seventy Is an Awkward Age--I'll Be Beautiful at Eighty

I saw Rita Moreno, 83,  in the newspaper this morning, and I realize that I may not be attractive again until I'm in my eighties.  Seventy is an awkward age--past the age of youth but not deep enough into old age for acceptance and adoration.  

Then I thought of that exchange from Barefoot in the Park, which I just looked up:

Once a month

              I try to make pretty young girls nervous

              just to keep my ego from going out.

              I'll save you a lot of anguish.

              I'm  ... I'm    years old

              and a thoroughly nice fellow.

              Well, I'm glad to hear that.

              I wish I were    years older.

              Older?

              Dirty old men seem to get away with a lot more.

              I'm still at the awkward age.

This version took out his age, but I looked it up!  This character, Valesco, is 58!!!!  He wishes that he were 68--a year younger than I am now.    But Neil Simon, born in 1927, was only 36 in 1963 when he wrote this play.  To him 68 seemed like what eighty really is!  Maybe now, at 88, Neil Simon is old enough to "get away with a lot more."

July Headlines I Can't Recycle Yet

I'm once again in the process of recycling the print newspaper that takes about two hours of my morning every day.

I just can't put the pages in the recycling bin before recording what's in the news:

"22 die in ethnic clashes in southern towns in Algeria."  I'm now in touch with two of my former students, and one of them made reference to awful things going on.  Every time I see a crisis worded in terms of religion, I wonder whether it's really political, but the powers that be want us to think of political clashes as religious ones so we'll be more dismissive of legitimate political complaints and fear "them" and be willing to kill them because they hate us for our freedom.  But that's just the way my mind works.

"Mountain lion spotted roaming in parts of S.F."  A puma was seen in Sea Cliff!  I need to contact our friend, the host of our View and Chew group of Francophones/Francophiles, who lives there, where we go once a month.  (This month we--if not that puma--will go twice a month because in addition to our usual Sunday morning with amuses-gueules and Village francais, we're viewing Manon des sources.)  The puma has also been seen near Lincoln and Washington blvd. in the Presidio, on the 1000 block of Gough Street, and near Lake Merced.

"4 East Bay community colleges hit by sanctions" reports Nanette Asimov on July 9.

There's a "Bayview land battle."

"El Nino forecast raises hopes for a wet winter"--warming sea surface and emerging equatorial winds.

Today there was an editorial against the cap on reserves in the school district, saying that it benefits only teacher unions.  I see an article from yesterday, July 10, by Jill tucker reporting "School trustees oppose cap on reserves."

On South Carolina "Confederate flag will be set to the 'relic room.'"

Toxins from algae contaminated the drinking water for 400,000 people in northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan.

"beloved camp in peril" is about Camp Mather,which is of grave concern to those who make a tradition of going there because  the state says San Francisco has to stop drawing water at four spots in the Sierra, and one of them is the sole source of water for Camp Mather.  (I sympathize with those families, but I also think it would be good to educate the kids going to that camp on the preciousness of water, and I hope that opportunity won't be lost in favor of their feeling of entitlement.)

"Remembering the 'Forgotten War'" is an editoral about the Korean War Memorial that has been designed and maybe soon be there to "remember the suffering of the Korean people when invaders poured across the 38th parallel."  (My father would have considered the US on another anti-communist crusade, to be the invaders.)

"S.f. police didn't probe gun theft until pier killing" reports on the fact that the murder weapon in the hands of the undocumented immigrant was left in the car of a federal agent.

I'll be back with more headlines after I add these pages to the recycling bin!

Xe Sands, a Voice I Really Like

I've been listening to Euphoria on Audible books, and I liked the female reader enough to look up her name, which sounded like X-E Zanze.  It turned out to be Xe Sands--information much easier to find on the Audible website than are the translators of their books.  (My students once had a problem with Kindred because when I asked who was narrating the story, they heard on the recorded version that it was "narrated by"...I meant who was telling the story in the written form.  I wish Audible would say "Read by...")

Anyway, what I like about Xe Sands' voice is the natural, creamy quality that catches in a really lovely way.  I'd like to know how she would describe her own voice.  I'll bet she's gotten a lot of compliments on it.

Bring SUV Drivers in for Questioning by Mark Miller

This is too brilliant a column not to be online!  It came to my attention in 2001, and I used it as an extra-credit reading assignment to extend our unit on SUVs. It's one of the best post-9/11 pieces I've read. Friday, October 19, 2001 Bring SUV Drivers in for Questioning By Mark Miller Special to The Examiner Attorney General Ashcroft wants us to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. We're the guardians of our homeland, he says — America's first line of defense. Responding to my country's call, I've turned a watchful eye on my fellow Angeleños, alert for activities hostile to The American Way. At the risk of alarming the millions who read this column and rely upon it for important civil defense tips, I must report that we are completely infiltrated by people whose activities pose a "credible threat" to our national well-being. This became apparent on my first reconnaissance patrol. Slipping unnoticed into Beverly Hills, I observed hundreds of people masquerading as shoppers. Since the current economic slump began, experts have warned that if we don't keep buying lots of stuff that we don't need, but instead unpatriotically put our money in savings accounts, America's Ponzi scheme economy could collapse. As I shadowed the "shoppers," I saw that while they seemed fascinated by items such as $2,500 blouses, $400 bras, $1,400 loafers and $25,000 wristwatches, few of them bought anything. These people must be put on watch lists. Next I penetrated Santa Monica, where I was shocked to find legions of saboteurs disguised as "soccer moms" and "dads" and driving military-sized trucks their propaganda organs misrepresent as "sport utility vehicles." Political analysts have warned for years that our insatiable and increasing appetite for oil has made America a junkie nation, as desperately dependent upon Middle Eastern suppliers as heroin addicts are on their dealers. Clearly then, everyone who drives a hyper-bloated SUV should be taken in for questioning — particularly the ones whose vehicles have those massive front bumpers with no apparent utility save for pushing people in electric cars over cliffs. Posing as a "Starbucks customer" sitting at a sidewalk table, I spied on SUV movements. I noted their drivers' confident airs and arrogant pride at driving three- ton vehicles that get as little as 10 miles per gallon ("I can afford it!") and whose sluggish acceleration has been shown to slow city traffic through controlled intersections by as much as 30 percent. Ironically these are the vehicles that in L.A. since September 11th most often display American flags. Pretending to read the Santa Monica Mirror, I watched an Enemy of America back her Ford Excursion into a parking space and knock over two sidewalk tables, scattering latte drinkers like panicked tundra pigs. It was not lost on your vigilant reporter that this terrorist "mom" knew only how to drive the vehicle, not park it. Posing as a "typical upscale homemaker," right down to the rolled-up exercise mat under her arm, she professed "shock" at the toppled tables and then darted into a "yoga studio" — which judging from the number of SUVs crowding its parking lot is clearly a terrorist cell. I expanded my surveillance by enlisting operatives in West Hollywood, who alert me to others who threaten our freedoms. One reported in on Wednesday, asking if I thought her landlord, who raised the rent of an upstairs gay couple from $2,10 0 to $3,000 to force them out, and then rented the same unit to a heterosexual couple for $2,300, might be in league with the terrorists. I assured her that he is, although he might not be aware of it himself.  She has alerted the proper authorities. Security is heavy at the West L. A. Federal Building, where this week I saw a young woman in a new black BMW cut into a parking space behind an elderly couple backing their tired Oldsmobile into it — a move that in the Old West probably would have gotten her shot. Ignoring them, she popped out of her car and strode away, all purpose. Her sweatshirt was emblazoned "UCLA School of Business." No, I am not making this up. Maybe she'll join the ranks of those MBA Talibans whose predatory interpretation of capitalism ascribes to the Greed is Good doctrine — the ammoral opportunism that spurs American companies to sell DDT, the environmentally devastating insecticide long banned in the USA, everywhere else around the world. Maybe she'll find a market for her skills at one of the big tobacco companies that still give away cigarettes to kids all across the globe, every year hooking a few hundred thousand more. Since September 11th the US has worked hard to tell the world what good people we are. And we are, by and large. But meanwhile the actions of the un-Americans among us are sending out another message — and actions, as we know, speak louder than words.

Mark Miller is a journalist and screenwriter in Los Angeles.

His column appears Fridays.

Contact Mark Miller at mhmllr@att.net

San Francisco Examiner

988 Market Street

San Francisco, California 94102

Main: 415.359.2600

Fax: 415.359.2766

Address Your Audience as Your Grandchildren

Last night at the RPCV (Return Peace Corps Volunteers) storytelling gathering, I realized that hearing the "Important Date in Peace Corps History" story wasn't the same as reading it in print--because I'm there looking like the grandmother of the woman experiencing it!  Getting it in print, the reader could see the young me, but hearing it from me was another experience--maybe a little creepy!  Who was this 69-year-old woman acting out the antics of a recent college graduate?  Here's part of the story:

I liked being trapped in the rain with Jim.  I started singing a song from The Fantastiks.  “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” described finding shelter in the rain and ended with these lines:

And we'll not complain
If it never stops at all.
We'll live and love
Within our own four walls.

            I loved musicals and knew a show tune for every occasion.

            But on that occasion a very nice Filipino-American couple saw us from their living room window, and the husband came across the street with an umbrella and invited us into their home.   They gave us clothes to wear while our wet ones were in their dryer.  They also invited us back to have dinner with them and to meet a friend who did authentic Hawaiian dancing.

            Were Jim and I a couple? I wondered.  That felt good—even if he wasn’t a foreigner!

            Then came our final days in Hawaii—in Honolulu, where we were given three days—like a furlough-- before leaving the United States to serve in a foreign land.    We travelled as a group, of course, but we were sometimes given moments and even hours alone.

I've decided to address the audience as my grandchildren.  I'll say something like this:

Okay, grandchildren, gathering 'round!  Grandmommy's gonna tell you a story.  That's what grandmommies are for.  And this story is about an important date in Peace Corps history!  It's one I went on in January 1970, and the guy who took me on this date said it was the best date he'd ever had!  No, I'm sorry!  This is not a plot spoiler, but it wasn't your granddaddy though he and I have had some pretty good dates too.

This one began in Hawaii.  (and on it will go)

I am no longer the Kate Winslet Rose in The Titanic.  I am now closer to the Gloria Stuart Old Rose.

How to Prepare an Old Love for the Old You 40 Years Later

Making arrangement to meet a former boyfriend I hadn't seen for forty years, I felt the need to be more realistic about what he would see.  This would not be a romantic encounter; I have a meque--mejor que un esposo--and I want to be monogamous.  (Not to mention the self-consciousness that would come with being with a man who hadn't watched me age grad-u-al-ly!)  Of course, I'd sent photos, but I'd always chosen the most flattering pictures of me.  Now he'd be seeing the me outside the frame of the carefully chosen photos.

I can face myself in the mirror every morning without a problem.  I have a healthy, un-neurotic acceptance of age and aging.  I am not an ageist or a lookist.  But when I catch my reflection by accident in my iPhone, that un-neurotic acceptance makes an abrupt exit and I'm left with a look of horror having seen that horrific image that is NOT the one in my bathroom mirror and certainly not the one in the carefully chosen photos.

 I was writing in French, and I wanted the vocabulary to describe the new old me.  I Googled "description d'une vielle femme" (description of an old woman) and got a description of a woman of 87 who was méchante, arrogante, toujours énervée et ne parle a personne."  Mean, arrogant, always upset and never speaking to anyone."  The passage went on to say that she had lived alone since the death of her husband and seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.  She had a skinny frame, a rounded back, and she hobbled along the streets of the town bent over her cane.  He face gave proof of the difficulties she'd faced in life.  It was lined, wrinkled like a dried apple.  Her color was like dried sheepskin, which made her wrinkles and lines stand out.

Well, maybe that didn't quite describe me at 17 years younger, but it certainly gave me something to look forward to.  

So...I Googled the French for "description of a woman of 70 years" and got news about the disappearance of a woman of 70 in the Haute-Vienne area of France whose husband had reported her unexplained disappearance, leaving home in her pajama bottoms (not top?) without her bag or her cell phone.  

That didn't help me with my description since it's not my pajama bottoms that have aged.  

So I kept looking and saw that in Japan they'd found the corpse of a 70-year old woman in a suitcase left in a train station in Tokyo.    

Then I found the news report on a 70-year-old woman whose leg had gotten caught between the train and the platform.  (This ended happily; 12 people on the train used their weight together to dislodge her leg and save her!) 

Finally I gave up trying to describe myself, but I told him that I now wear glasses. 

A couple of years ago I wrote a poem about glasses:

He took off his glasses, I thought, to appear

More handsome to me.  But now I fear

He took off his glasses to see me less clear.

Another friend, Beth, and I took our friend Shehla to tea on her birthday at a place called The Secret Garden, right across from Golden Gate Park.  I suggested that they pose behind the three-tiered tea tray, which they did, resulting in these adorable pictures, giving them hats of sweet cakes and fruit and collars of tea sandwiches:

 When it was my turn, I couldn't stand what I saw there in my digital camera play back!  In addition to the wear and tear that comes with age, I had a sty, and I knew that my eye looked awful.  But Shehla and Beth said they couldn't tell the difference between one eye and another, so I guess both eyes look sick or...they didn't want to put on their glasses!

Interrupting a Monologue to Have a Conversation

In the past week, when I've interjected something in a friend's narrative when I thought we were having a conversation, I've seen that the person wanted to finish her monologue before having any input from me.  This happened with both a friend and a relative.  (I'm not implying that relatives can't be  friends.)

I've been guilty of high-jacking a bit of conversation and taking it off into an unplanned area against the pilot's wishes, but this wasn't one of those times. 

In both cases, I was trying to interject something that I thought would really help the other person.  I thought my interjection should that I was being attentive and concerned.  

But who knows?  Maybe if I had a recording of the conversation, I'd hear things differently.  

More on this tomorrow.

To Indent or Not To Indent

After years of considering indenting a moral law, I've been told not to do it for the piece I've written on a CCSF student.  I was obedient, but I remained curious, so I just looked it up:

But one thing I recently learned is that to properly format something you want to publish, you should never use tab to intent. I know, weird. And it's not 3 spaces either. Right click on your piece, and under the heading Special put "first line" by "0.5" And this will automatically indent for you whenever you hit enter at the end of the paragraph.

Church People Bravely Applying Religious Teachings

Today while I was on the treadmill at the Y, CNN was broadcasting today's service at Emanuel African-American Methodist Episcopal Church, the first it's had since the killings.  There was also an interview with someone who explained their concept of the difference between happiness and joy.  Even though I've always thought both depended upon internal rather than external circumstances, I liked what the interviewee said:  Happiness depends on exterior things, but joy comes from within and is "hallelujah anyway!"  He also said that this incident wasn't an isolated incident or they wouldn't have built up the strength to deal with it.  (I'm glad they think such incidents build up strength rather than wear down resolve!)

The forgiving way they've dealt with his tragedy reminds me of how the Amish responded in 2006 after their children had been killed by a man who was mentally ill.  To support his widow, they attended his funeral and stood by her side.

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Nothing-can-kill-the-hope-and-resilience-of-kids-2468479.php

Looking for the 2006 piece by Steve Winn, I found another!  The mother of the man who murdered five children and injured others is taking care of one of the injured ones.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mother-amish-killer-cares-survivor-son-massacre-article-1.1542337

CCSF Outreach

A picture may be worth 1000 words, but here you get only the words until I have a little more time.

In my CCSF Outreach, I have photos going all the way back to Sunday Streets on Valencia, August 5, 2012 and covering yesterday's Carnaval booth for CCSF AssociatedStudents.  Here's a list of the dates I've included so far in the 187 photos:

August 5, 2012  Valencia Sunday Streets
May 9, 2013
Dec. 20, 2013
Dec. 23, 2013
Jan. 3, 2014
Jan. 20, 2014
Feb. 8, 2014
Feb. 12, 2014
April 22, 2014
May 24, 2014
July 31, 2014
August 1, 2014
August 7, 2014
August 7, 2014
Jan. 21, 2015
March 11, 2015
March 19, 2015
April 11, 2015
April 12, 2015 (Bayview Sunday Streets)
April 15 (Clement)
April 16, 2015  (Montgomery Street Station with the CCSF Language Dept.>)
April 18, 2015
April 20, 2015
April 23, 2015
May 10, 2015  (Valencia Sunday Streets)
May 24, 2015  Carnaval

An Outsider Going Into the Tenderloin before Dave Egger's 826 Valencia

As an outsider dipping into the Tenderloin for years,  I read  "Writing a new chapter for dicey Tenderloin site."about the extension of the 826 Valencia at 172 Golden Gate,  with great interest. 

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Author-Dave-Eggers-nonprofit-heading-to-6250170.php

 At one time I went into the Tenderloin just to go to McDonald's--not the Fast Food Nation one but the "Dirty, Poorly-Lit Place for Books" that had Photoplay and Modern Screen Magazines not just from my childhood (my incentive to learn to read) but from my mother's.  I went to the Golden Gate Theatre, too, and occasionally to the Exit, but quickly--stepping over or around bodies that made me feel I didn't belong.  Between 1982 and 1994 I took substitute teaching assignments in the Tenderloin and even once shared a night class there, at 750 Eddy and even at John Adams, where I taught, I had to teach "peep show" to students drawing maps of their Tenderloin neighborhood.  Much more recently, when I took a course in comparative religions, I went to a mosque at 118 Jones near Golden Gate.  But I never connected the dots, never saw the blocks that connected one of these places with another.  

After  the accreditation of City College of San Francisco was threatened in 2012, I started going around the city as part of the enrollment campaign, to let people know the college was still open and accredited, and I started seeing the whole city in a new way.  I saw that the European Bookstore I used to go to had closed a couple of years earlier.  I also saw sings like "Living in the Ten/409 Historic Buildings in 33 Blocks.  Yeah.  We're PROUD."    

What were those 409 Historic Buildings?  I wrote to Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle.  He had never noticed the sign and didn't know.  

Most recently I saw the golden brick road indicating safe paths for families and met the people who are trying to assure "safe passage" to the children who live in the Tenderloin.  

I've read Gary Kamiy'a  San Francisco, Cool Gray City of Love:  49 Views of San Francisco, which has 14 pages on the Tenderloin, and the recent California Sunday Magazine inserted in the SF Chronicle, which featured "In the Tenderloin" with several first-person accounts--all good reads.  But I've nver seen a better write-up on the Civic Center Campus of City College than that written by Denise Selleck, a teacher at CCSF, before the doors at 750 Eddy were closed.

https://www.ccsf.edu/dam/Organizational_Assets/Our_Campuses/CivicCenter/images4cvc/civiccenterhistory.pdf

I hope that while  826 Valencia is "writing a new chapter " in the Tenderloin, City College will be written back in.  

tst

testing

Help Me De-Clutter

On a San Francisco Vistas blog, I should really be posting pictures of yesterday's excursion, taking Javier and me on the #28 Fort Mason bus to Fulton and Park Presidio to look for statuary represented in the paintings by Robert Minervini at bus shelters on Market.  This is what we found--one easily and accidentally, the other with some effort because no one we talked to knew about Lloyd lake, and there's no map at the deYoung that shows where all statues are.  (I've sent for a book, recommended by Lesley Stahls, a friend who knows the park very well and gives tours of the Botanical Garden:  San Francisco's Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories.)

But I need help dealing with the clutter on my desk and am once again asking for your support.  (You are the world that never writes to me.  I see that after four years I have zero followers.)  

I'll keep Walgreen's free Diabetes Magazine not just for its catchy name but for its recipe for Smoky Mediterranean Beet Burgers.  That will go in a little pile to be taken to the kitchen along with Whole Foods Catering pamphlet, and both will go on my recipe books bookshelves or in my recipe bottom drawer.  

The Tours of the Strand with Friday, May 15 circled, will go up on the refrigerator, so same pile.

The ACT 4x7" postcard for A Little Night Music should go in my to-do pile.  

Should I keep the op-ed piece by Matt Haber "S.F. Works Its Magic on a New Yorker" to put in Jonathan's Christmas stocking or just send him the link?  I think I'll put it in a file that I have, for some reason, labeled "Jonathan's Typing."   (I've put it in, but I did catch a glimpse of a note card I made of an early cassette recording on which Jonathan was chanting "The people united will never be defeated," singing "Chazu Bao" and reciting "Gung Hay Fat Choi." )

Earthweek:  a diary of the planet" was especially interesting the week ending April 24, so I kept that.  It has the usual record heat persisting and eruptions (Chile's Calbuco volcano), the primitive diversity of bacteria in indigenous people in Venezuela's Amazon who were isolated for a long time,  Especially interesting was the worm rain in Norway and New Zealand's program to eradicate rates, possums and stoats (?) by placing poison traps.  

I have something on a 1936 Buick from April 17, 2015!  I tore it out of the newspaper to share with a former boyfriend who used to take me out in his family's Buick of about that vintage, which was already special in 1962 and 1963!

The handouts on "CCSF Pacific Islanders Club"  "Critical Pacific Islands Studies" brochure that were given out the day I met a friend on campus for another reason (Project Survive) and notices the big San Francisco Day at the Wellness Center.  I'll put these in my CCSF collection along with "Build Your Future/Study English" from the ESL Department and VIDA's "Undocumented & Educated."  Also a page-long flyer on "Super Student Club"  

A Fidelity statement giving my ending balance as $0.00.    Oh, but I had made dividends & interest of $50.23.  Should I have reported that?  

The United Cerebral Palsy has a pickup for Clothing & Household Items + e-waste on Thursday, May 7.  

Some old hour-by-hour accounts I use to show how I use time.  Recycling bin. 

A mailing for Coral Zanin, my tenant back in the days when I upped the rent from $500 to $550.

Hurwitt's review of Beautiful Chaos:  A Life in the Theatre  Since I'm reading that now, I think I'll put the clipping in the book itself.  

A Senior Citizen Exemption Application Form from the Quality Teacher & Education Act.  Gee!  I'm eligible.  But this is the 2008 act that provides money to the SF School District.  

A solicitation from Habitat for Humanity.  When did I last donate to that?

Nevius' report on his sewer plant field trip "Go with the flow:  a smelly sojourn" & a report on the closing of Heald College--like the closing of 750 Eddy, with no prior warning.  

VIDA's invitation to their "Third Annual Dream Graduation"  I should probably send them the photos I took.  

Various solicitations and a CREDO bill of only $4.64. 

At the Library for May 2015

A notice from Pacific Gas and Electric that work on a natural gas pipeline is beginning in my neighborhood.  14-18 Avenues between Ulloa and Vicente.  

To be continued. 

Home and Hearth and Books that Speak Volumes, Josh Green's at Contemporary Jewish Museum--Really!

The two-hour book buffet I have each morning around three o'clock (before my 5:00 wimp-out at the Stonestown Y) helps my neuro-diverse brain in gear, not exactly functioning normally, but focused and happy, nourished and ready for life.  I prepare a six-cup pot of tea and light the vertical log (a giant candle) in the fireplace.  Then I lean back into my recliner and read in a room with a tackiness I love.

My beautiful oak floor doesn't quite match the oak cabinet I had custom-built, so I put up a strip of tapa cloth to bring the shades of brown and tan and yellow/white together and then to use the space between the tapa cloth and cabinet, I put up a framed photo (surrounded by Tongan stamps) of the hut I lived in there in 1970 and 1971.  Then I thought of home and heart--all my past homes and the one I live in right now--and kept going, increasing my pleasure with every bit of tackiness.  I already had photos of my family, going back to my father's baby-hood, but I decided to mount these items of ancestor worship by putting them on pedestals of books--books that they loved or that, for some other reason, I associate with them.  More on that another day.

Getting back to the north wall, where my dark-oak cabinet stands, these are the books I have for Tonga:  a reprint of Mariner's description of Tonga from 1837, the Intensive Course in Tongan by Eric B. Shumway that came out in 1971 but whose lessons we used on Molokai in 1969 Peace Corps training, and the Tonga Pictorial by Donna Gerstle and Helen Rait published by the Tofua Press in San Diego but giving no date.  (I do remember meeting Donna Gersle and hearing that her parents had lamented that she had "traveled around the world to fall in love with a colored man."  She later dedicated a book to her parents for their love and understanding.)

To the left of the Tongan books I have Madrid as photographed in a National Geographics Magazine and represented in books Madrid as described by Lorenzo Lopez Sancho in 1970, the Prado Museum in 1970, with my address as Reyes Magos 4, and the Las Meninas, a play copyright 1972 from the Casa del libros 29, Madrid 13, but online listed as written in 1960 by Antonio Buero Vallejo

Whoops!  Better turn Madrid over right side up!  (Done!)

To the right of the Tonga books Algeria is shown through a photo of me at my home in Medea and my boyfriend's dog meeting a camel in Tamanrasset, and the books are L'Algerie Aujourd'hui (Today being around 1974, when Jean Hureau descirbed it for the series Jeune Afrique), a National Geographics article from 1973, the year before I left for two years in Algeria, and the Algerian novels Jours de Kabylie and Le Fils du pauvre by Mouloud Ferkoun and  Un ete africain by Mohammed Dib.

So you can see what I mean by tacky--even seeing only this little among so much more.  But I LOVE this room, and I need it to settle my sometimes windy neuro-diverse brain.

More photo and books tackiness coming soon!

Home and Hearth and Books that Speak Volumes, Josh Green's at Contemporary Jewish Museum

The San Francisco Chronicle's article on an artist's collection of books got me thinking and writing about my own home-and-hearth book display this morning.

I'd already gotten my brain in gear, this morning with a buffet of newspaper articles instead of the books that are stacked on the table on the left of my recliner.  (The tea tray is on the right.)

  I'd read about Freddie Grey, whose spine was inexplicably broken when he was arrested by the police...the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe coming to the US and to Silicon Valley (also part of the U.S. though a very special planet)...Israel's launching an air strike on its border with Syria...James Holmes going on trial for the movie theatre murders...Jason Saolu's pit bulls with eye glasses...Nepal's 3,300 dead after the earthquake and the Mt. Everest avalanche that was triggered by the earthquake, killing a Silicon Valley CEO...parking permits..Finland's charging a millionaire $58,000 for speeding, a fine in proportion to his income...the model for Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter, Saturday Evening Post 1943 (which I confused with the one "We can do it" done by a Pittsburgh artist),...Patreus's getting 2 years probation and a $100,000 fine for his revealing top-secret information (not having to join Snowden),...the strip teases offered in China to get people to funerals in rural areas so that the deceased can be properly honored in number,..the Bad Reporter's view that Bonds was protected by the personal belief exemption because he believed steroids prevented autism and the revelation that most service gods are not registered.  In addition to those captivating reports, I read Nanette Asimov's latest piece on CCSF, this one "College's battle prompts bills to curb accrediting panel" and two articles on San Francisco--our tourist attractions, one of the ongoing once-a-week section by Peter Hartlaub (who never bothered to respond to my mailing)  and a piece by a New Yorker returning to San Francisco "S.F. works its magic on a New Yorker"  (Matt Haber.)
But now that I've logged in what this blog is not about, I need to create a new blog focusing on Home and Hearth and books that speak volumes.

FBI and Terrorism-related cases

From The Brothers:  The Road to an American Tragedy by Masha Gessen

page 245 and part of 246:  (I'm not using quotation marks for what she's written, just for those she's quoting.

Since September 2001, U.S. courts have taken up an average of forty terrorism-related cases a year.  More than five hundred people have been charged, and virtually all of them have been convicted and sentenced.  Dozens of bombing plots have been revealed.  In 2014, Human Rights Watch released a report that analyzed many of those cases.  The researchers concluded that "all of the high-profile domestic terrorism plots of the last decade, with four exceptions, were actually FBI sting operations--plots conducted with the direct involvement of law enforcement informants or agents, including plots that were proposed or led by informants."

Since 9/11, the bulk of the FBI's efforts have centered on fighting terrorism, which becme its top institutional priority and consumes forty percent of the agency's operating budget.  Between 2001 and 2013, the number of terrorist attacks carried out on American soil by people connected to Islamic organizations numbered zero, but trumped-up terrorist plots numbered in the dozens, and Human Righs Watch report describes teh work of the FBI (initially quoting from a former FBI agent, Michael German):

"Today's terrorism sting operations reflect a significant departure from past practice.  When the FBI undercover agent or informant is the only purported link to a real terrorist group, supplies the motive, designs the plot and provides all the weapons, one has to question whether they are combatting terrorism or creating it..."  In many of the sting operations we examined, informants and undercover agents carefully laid out an ideological basis for a proposed terrorist attack, and then provided investigative targets with a range of options and the weapons necessary to carry out the attack.

Stan Freberg, Jerry Nachman, Leah Garchik on punctuation, Sam Whting and Robert Minervini on Market Street art, and More!

I almost didn't get dressed today because the Chronicle, so boring yesterday, was so fascinating today!  Sam Whiting's Datebook feature on Robert Minervini's art made me want to go to Market Street, a place that isn't usually magnetic.  Minervini, a thirty-three year old artist from Oakland, is bringing the statues out of Golden Gate Park in paintings he's created that make them more meaningful.  (Nobody reads this blog, but just let me note that he isn't really taking the statues out; he's just bringing them to life..)   I'm going to keep this article (yes, I get it in paper) in my binder labeled "Some of What Makes San Francisco So Wonderful."

Leah Garchik's column on favorite punctuation is full of really great comments--by her and by her readers.  Readers also quote the famous.  F. Scott Fitzgerald observed that using an exclamation point "is like laughing at your own job," but the reader quoting him says he like it becuase it's so often used in songs like "Stop!  In the Name of Love." Someone named John Sylvester says he likes the exlamation makr "becuase it emphsizes teh critical importance of whatever it is that I have written...This might otherwise have been missed."    Ann Packer, who started the whole conversation in Leah Garchik's column, says she likes the commas because "it leads to eleaboration."  I learned a new word, too:  interrobang, which combines the question mark and the exclamation point, one written on top of the other.  (Is that different from this?!)  Leah Garchik described Wikipedia as being "pretty hoity-toity" in their explanation calling the word "an example of a pormanteau which incorporates an onomatopeia."  Huh?

Memorial to Ex-Slave Hannah Reynolds, Walter Scott, Electrifying South Carolina

Virginia is doing something good with the memorial to ex-slave Hannah Reynolds, the only slave killed at the Battle of Appomattox--and whose slaveholder thought it of enough significance to report it.  (You may remember from Huckleberry Finn, that when someone asks whether anyone was hurt, Huckelberry Finn says, "No, ma'am.  A nigger was killed," and she says she's glad that no one got hurt.)  And from South Carolina, we have the Proterra startup making electric buses under the leadership of Ryan Popple, though that hardly makes up for the shooting in the back of Walter Scott in South Carolina.  Similar things happen right here in the progressive Bay Area, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the front page today, writing about Captain Jason Fox, who should have been removed from office after he was sued for an outrageous abuse of power in 2005 for his treatment of a gay man named Andrew Marconi.