An Open Letter to Stid Merkel after Reading His Final Column

Dear Stid Merkel,

I don't want a post-Stid world.  The only SF Chronicle writer I enjoy as much as you is Don Asmussen.

Sometimes I get the news first from him, and for a while I was getting really enlightening reviews from you.

There are so many plays I never had to see because I saw your column first--even though it was very hard to find.  (Why did they put it way in the back?)

 I've put "Harvey" on my Netflix list and will see that when I can no longer see your column way in the back of the Sunday paper.

Your fan, who has only one reason to live now instead of two, 

Tina Martin

Epic Musical Article Forwarded by My Son Jonathan

For several years my son Jonathan has sent me topical birthday and Mother Day greetings in the form of articles he says he's found in the New York Times, acknowledging me as The World's Best Mother.    This year, the New York Times made no such declaration, but they did have something on the epic musical I inspired!

November 15, 2017

Epic Musical Coming to Broadway

There are many long musicals. South Pacific lasts about three hours. Les Miserables, The Producers, and Mary Poppins are only slightly shorter. But now a musical is coming to Broadway that dwarfs them all: Dear Tina Martin will be 14 hours long and will be presented in seven parts over the course of a week.

The show is inspired by Tina Martin of San Francisco, who visited New York City this past fall and saw seven shows in seven days: Come From Away, Katie, Miss Saigon, Annie, Prince of Broadway, Dear Evan Hansen, and Groundhog Day. 

The story of Dear Tina Martin begins in Vietnam, where a woman named Kim has raised a baby named Tina in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, after Tina’s American soldier father evacuated from Saigon. Kim sings to Tina and Tina becomes addicted to show tunes.

Tragedy strikes when Kim takes her own life so that Tina can have a better life with her father in America, where there are more musical revivals.

Tina boards a plane to New York to meet her father, but her plane is diverted to Gander, New Foundland. There she receives such a warm welcome that she stays and becomes known as an orphan. She inspires the town with her optimism, befriending a stray dog and singing about her hopes for tomorrow.

Her hopes sour, however, when she starts to find that every tomorrow is another today. It is as though she is living the same day over and over again. But then she realizes: she awoke again and again on the same day only because of her segmented sleep.

A prince named Harold visits the town and offers her a role in a revue in New York City. She accepts. She loves her role in the musical and is taken in by the rest of the cast. But provocative questions about consent and going too far are raised when they respond to her love of musical theater by taking her to an opera. (It doesn’t help that the opera is Madame Butterfly.) She becomes distraught. But she begins writing to herself about the experience (“Dear Tina Martin”) and soon becomes enchanted with graphomania.

This is all in the first half hour. Highlights of the following hours include her years in the Peace Corps in Tonga, teaching abroad, having a son and a meque, and developing countless relationships with friends and family. The show, astonishingly full of interest and variety, is still being written. 

A very special bouquet from my meque

Javier has brought me hundreds of beautiful bouquets over the past 15 years; he even wrote  "will never cross threshold without flowers" into the bylaws of the Club Toruño-Martin back in 2002.

But maybe my favorite bouquet  is the one he created for me to keep the animalitos from devouring what is left of my bougainvillea.

It means even more that he had already granted my birthday wishes downtown, and we were back and  already in our "something more comfortable" clothes when Javier said he would get dressed again and get me protective netting at the hardware store right away instead of waiting until the next morning so that I wouldn't have to worry about the plant overnight.

As he worked on the screen--with minimal help from me--images of The Little Prince came to mind.





A bouquet from my very own prince, Meque Javier.

Anne Fadiman at Bookshop West Portal

Bookshop West Portal, my neighborhood bookstore, has a lot of good events.  Earlier this year it hosted "What We Do Now:  Standing Up for Our Values in Trump's America" and "Radical Hope."  Maybe my favorite ever was when they hosted Richard Russo, whose writing I like so much and who's taught composition and written about parents who had a very different way of responding to student writing.  I had the chance to ask him about his experience at the same time that I was responding to student (ESL student) writing.

When I found out that Anne Fadiman was going to be doing a reading, I started listening to The Wine-Lover's Daughter and then bought the book so I could mark favorite passages.  I also wrote her a fan letter and told her about the JoMama Book Club.

Before she spoke and read, Neal and Susan served us wine.

  A friend of hers had sat down next to me and was soon joined by his wife, who'd just gotten two "incredible salads" at Lemonade, just down the block on West Portal.  It turned out that they had brought Anne Fadiman to the reading, and he was mentioned in her book  as her companion trying wines in the chapter "Initiation."  I'd marked a section of page 49:

                        Peter and I were eighteen.  In those days, there was nothing out of the ordinary about spending a                          weekend alone with a boy with whom you     were not sleeping, though I knew Peter wished our                            platonic relationship were otherwise.  The previous yer, he had sent me a love letter--    the best                            one I have ever received--in which he wrote, "Every part of me loves every part of you."  He                                   would,  in fact, have made an excellent boyfriend, but I can see that only now, more than forty                                 years later.  We are still friends.  I was Best Human at his wedding.  He     was a bridesperson at                           mine.

He seemed very happy with the woman he married.

Anne Fadiman's father hosted the show "Information, Please" and got 10% of the American population listening.  She lamented that now readers just wanted to get instructions on how to get richer and do better on match.com  and said, "No one like my father could command the attention of 10% of Americans now."

She said that winning the National Book Award in 1997 completely took her by surprise.  "I"d written about an epileptic Hmong toddler!"  she said.  (Of course, we know she'd written about a whole culture, cultural insensitivity, the medical profession, etc., and she knows that too.)  She wanted to let her parents know she'd won the award, so someone handed her a cell phone--an enormous thing--and it was the first time she'd ever used one.  

She said when she was  recording her book, she thought, "Why does this writer use such long sentences!?" It turned out that I had heard her on Audible even before she did.  She hadn't even known that the Audible version was out!

Gophers Ate My Bougainvillea, Which Had Survived Highway Fumes for 23 Years

My bougainvillea had seasons.  Bougainvilleas do that.  So I wasn't alarmed when, after flourishing in August and the months before

, it went "dormant."  I knew it would bloom again soon, and it did.  In October I saw new flowers, and on October 28, I took a picture of the renewed bougainvillea blossoms on my balcony.

But I should have paid more attention to mounds of dirt around the wooden structure--call it an enormous pot-- the bougainvillea was sitting in. 

The newly-blooming bougainvillea stopped blooming and I saw this:

Yesterday a gardener came and confirmed the bad news.  Gophers had eaten the roots.  Only one vine was still living.  

Why after all these years--23!--did the gophers go for it? Were they particularly hungry this year?  Were they roaming into new-to-them territory like the cougars, mountain lions, and coyotes in San Francisco?

I think of those fairy tales, where Red Riding Hood's grandmother can be brought back whole from the belly of the wolf.  There's Jonah, swallowed by a whale.  I don't really want to split open a gopher to rescue my beloved plant, but why couldn't the gopher just  repent and regurgitate, bringing the bougainvillea roots back intact and ready to go again?

SF Chronicle's Bad Reporter Keeps Me Informed

When I see the Bad Reporter's headling:  NRA PROPOSES ALL RED FLAGS AT HALF STAFF/Beautiful gesture is a tribute to the victims," of course I understand it because the NRA always responds to  gun violence in the same sensitive way.

But I occasionally see allusions I don't understand, as was the case with CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER TO REPLACE ROY MOORE.  I hadn't yet learned about Roy Moore's alleged molestation of a 14-year-old a couple of decades ago.  But I guessed correctly that Christopher Plummer was replacing Kevin Spacey in something or other. 

The Tenderloin Times

Last week I went to a gathering at the Tenderloin Museum, where we "donors"  (sounds like an arm and a limb) were served drinks and hors d'oeuvres.  (Not sure there was any tender loin, but maybe...)  We had from 5:30 to 7:00 to look around the museum, where issues from The Tenderloin Times 1977-1994 were on display.

Then there was to be a panel of journalists on the topic "From Broadsheet to Broadband:  Community Media in the Digital Age."  They each spoke for five minutes about how technology is re-defining how we connect to media and the concept of community.

I got a good seat and eaves-dropped on the group I assumed would make up the panel.

I recognized Andrew Lam from the time I took my City College class to see him on the Ocean Campus.  But there was another man whose face I knew, but I didn't know from where.

Finally it dawned on me that he was Juan Gonzales, the chair of the CCSF Journalism Department as well as the founder of El Tecolote, a bilingual newspaper now 47-years old.  

The man on Juan's right in the photos here is Rob Waters, a former editor of The Tenderloin Times.  The man you see on the far right was the moderator, Brad Paul, housing advocate and former Cadillac Hotel tenant.

Below you can see them when Rob Waters was speaking and the others were seated for the panel.

Sara Colm, former editor; Andrew Lam, author; Carrie Sisto, Tenderloin Editor of Hoodline; Juan Gonzales, founder of El Tecolote and Chair of CCSF's Journalism Department.

David Talbot, co-founder of Salon, 48 Hills op-ed writer, former SF Examiner editor, former SF Chronicle columnist, and author, was a special speaker.

Here's Randy Shaw, director of the non-profit that runs the museum, The Tenderloin Housing Clinic,  and the author of  The Tenderloin:  Sex, Crime and Resitance in the Heart of San Francisco. 

.

"Tip" for the San Francisco Chronicle on Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

I just sent the following "tip" to the San Francisco Chronicle:

So far, if I'm not mistaken, the SF Chronicle hasn't done its own reporting on those detained by King Salman and the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia.  Instead you've used reports from the New York Times, but there's a local angle and information I haven't seen reported.

The son of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the one so often mentioned in reports because he's the "Warren Buffett of the Middle East,"  has a son,  Khaled bin Alwaleed, who's been very active in the environmental movement away from fossil fuels.  He was instrumental in getting LED lights in Jordan.  He's even a vegan and has eaten at Chaya in San Francisco.  The emphasis in the reports I've read so far has been on the wealth of Alwaleed bin Talal and how his arrest has affected the stock market, not on  the progressive ideals and actions he and his son have championed.  Is there some way you could interview his son and do your own reporting?

I then sent a link, urging John Diaz/the Chronicle staff to read it:

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/02/10/news/meet-vegan-saudi-prince-whos-turning-lights-jordan

Andrew Ogus, Incredible Artist

Andrew Ogus, I learned back in the 1980's, designed books, but I had only an inkling of his talent and imagination until I joined the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and started receiving the Knight Letter, the members' magazine, for which he has been the publication designer since 2003.

I missed his September show, and now, looking online,  I see how many others I missed:

http://andrewogus.com/shows

I'm so glad I didn't miss yesterday's! 

His printmaking and drawing skills are awe-inspiring, and talking to him yesterday  I realized how similar his creative process is to what writers say about theirs.  He says he has something in mind after he prepares the paper, but the muses take over after that, so he can and usually does surprise himself. 

Muses,  the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts, seems like the right word for the work of an artist so inspired by Greek mythology.  Our conversation  made me aware of how much I've missed or forgotten about Greek mythology.  

He told me about the story of  Castor and Pollux, twins, but not identical ones because Pollux was immortal, and Castor was not.  When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with Castor, and Zeus sent them both to heaven in the form of Gemini!

 The word "saucing" is new to me but something he said he learned to do at Fort Mason. 

When I come back I want to relate the funny story of a sale Andrew made yesterday and show some of his work on paper--including Madonna and Child.

Celebrating Friendship, Food, Freedom, and Art!

 Shehla and I had planned to devote the day to celebrating the November 4th birthday of a friend, Beth Ericson, but her time was limited, so after we had Mediterranean (Turkish) food at Bursa--a wonderful restaurant due to the servers as well as to the food--stopped at the West Portal Produce Market for persimmons and had a piece of the cake and Kahlua trifle I'd made for Beth, I had time to go downtown to see Andrew Ogus' incredible art at the studio open house at 759 Bryant.

On the way there I saw a protest march which said "#Nov4ItBegins," which I realized I could have used on a card for Beth had it been a few hours earlier--but the rest might not have fit quite so well:  "TrumpPenceMustGO.  RefuseFascism.org 

More on Andrew Ogus' art tomorrow!

A Belated Report on Halloween in the City!

When I shared my photos of Halloween on West Portal, Bill shared this picture of a pumpkin Melanie's grandson Matteo created--a pumpkin vomiting from having had too much Halloween candy.

Time flies!  The last time I saw the artist, he was just an infant sleeping through Tom and Bill's wedding vows!  Here he is with his mother and grandparents at City Hall, SF, in 2008.

Then at Greens we saw this, Pumpkins and gourds on the root end of the redwood burl.

Now that It's November 4, Time for Halloween!

I'm always behind, but I can't leave Halloween behind, so here it is on Vicente 2017.

For several days I admired this house every time I walked to West Portal.

So on Halloween night I waited until sunset to see it in the dark.

There were streams of costumed people on the sidewalk and in the streets, and some neighbors had even put up tents or canapes in their front yard to welcome the trick-or-treaters. 

Tina Martin San Francisco Vistas: Willie Brown Needs to Connect the Dots for a Saner Diet

Tina Martin San Francisco Vistas: Willie Brown Needs to Connect the Dots for a Saner Diet

Going Back to My Week in NYC, September 2-9

 I saw 7 plays while I was in New York:  Come from Away, Katie, Miss Saigon, Annie (in Westchester outside of NYC),   Prince of Broadway, Dear Evan Hansen and Groundhog Day.  I enjoyed all of them.

I've already talked about "Katie" in a separate blogspot.

Seeing Annie was special because an actor I met on the Camino de Santiago  last September was playing President FDR in the show.  He invited me to join him and other actors in the van to Westchester and got me a free ticket and lunch.   It was the nicest dinner theater I'd ever been to although the dinner was lunch!  The play was also the best production I've ever seen of Annie.   John-Charles made a great FDR!

Before Jonathan and I saw Dear Evan Hansen, a friend of his invited me to go behind the stage, where she works getting actors' clothes ready for each performance.  (The actor in Dear Evan Hansen really cries every night, and there's evidence of this on the sleeve of his shirt, so that's one item she deals with.)

Here are some photos of my stay in NY!  

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/upl135l8ficrn0v/AABcOr2YaVi-FSQ6RNPk0eJBa?dl=0

Among the people you'll see are my nephew Karl, whose July birthday we celebrated at Blossom on Columbus.  When he lived in SF, he loved the fog, so I brought him an article explaining that the fog has been named Karl!

Sunday morning it was raining, so I borrowed Jonathan's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center umbrella.  Unfortunately, I left it in the theater, and when I went back for it, it hadn't been turned in.

On Sunday Jonathan and I had lunch with Jim Canning (who was in the original cast ofGrease) and his wife at Saju's, a French restaurant near the Schoenfeld Theater, where we saw Come from Away.    We then ate at Mother of Pearl with Jonathan's girlfriend Diana and their friend Daniel, who live in Brooklyn.  The food was beautiful and all plant-based--delicious and kind to animals and the environment.  

You can see Diana and Daniel showing their surprise at finding a pay telephone on the street!

Then on Monday Jonathan and I went to Book Culture, near his apartment, and then met Diana and had lunch at Sweetgreen before taking a walk from 72nd Street to 106 to the Conservatory Garden--English, Italian, and French!  We stopped at the Shakespeare Garden as well as at Turtle Pond. 

I learned that the lamp posts let us know what street we're near in case we get lost in the park!

I'd read about Seneca,  the village of black property owners that was destroyed to build Central Park, so that sign interested me.  I also like the subway signs like the one you see here--and the menus!  Here were are at By Chloe.  

That was before the 9:00 PM performance of "Katie," where Jonathan, Isabelle, Thomas, and I saw Miguel, watched his engrossing play, and participated in the talk-back.  

Then you see the actor I first met a year ago and his husband, who's both acted in plays and directed them.  They have a show-filled home!  

You see the actors all lined up to be picked up for the 45 min. ride to Winchester, a dinner theater.  (It turns out that Bill and Hillary Clinton were there the week before I was.)  The guy you see in the van is the actor who played a major part in Annie; I thought it was great that he was also driving us!  

In the last two pictures you see me in the subway near Jonathan's apartment, where I'm holding the programs from the past week.

I was caught in the rain one day and decided that if I had to buy an umbrella, I'd get a New York one, however tacky.  I thought I was buying one that said, "I LOVE NEW YORK."  Instead it said, "NEW YORK LOVES ME."  I was embarrassed, but a man I met on the street assured me, "Yes, New York does love you," so I was relieved to find it was mutual.  

Willie Brown Needs to Connect the Dots for a Saner Diet

In yesterday's SF Chronicle, Willie Brown failed to connect the dots between a vegan diet and the environment.

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-francisco-chronicle/20170917/282020442466466

In response, I got this off to the SF Chronicle this morning (Monday, September 18, 2017)   around 8:05 am.

(The require a short bio:  Before retiring as an instructor at CCSF in 2014, I taught and trained teachers on five continents--Oceana, Asia, North America, Africa, and Europe.  I recently did a vegan plate-to-plate pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and in Madrid, Paris, and NYC.)

I enjoy reading Willie Brown's column, but he needs to connect the dots.  In Willie's World September 17, he's gleeful about Bill Clinton's weight gain, suspecting that "he has ditched the vegan diet that he took up after his heart troubles and is now back to the cheeseburgers that made him great."  Then he extols Governor Jerry Brown as "the nation's leading voice on climate change" but ignores what Governor Brown said in 2015 about the impact of our diet on the environment :  "I think you should all be eating veggie burgers."

The Notion that "A Mother Knows" Presented by the Actress-Mother of "Katie"

 Jonathan turned down the chance to see several of the plays I was seeing, but he immediately said yes to Katie,  the play by Javier's son Miguel Toruno.  It was fortunate that one of the nights it was playing was Dark Monday, so I didn't have to give up any of the tickets I had for other nights.  (I would have given one up if it had been necessary.)

We were thrilled to see Miguel both before and after the play.  (I'd like a tee-shirt like his, and I'll bet Javier would too--even though he never wears a tee-shirt.)

The play itself was/is very engaging and thought-provoking as you can tell by the talk back here:

 http://pennytempletonstudio.com/katie-directed-penny-templeton-opens-tonight-theater-new-city/

For now I'm going to comment on only one remark that was made:  Alixx Schottland, who played the mother,  said, in reference to her "reading" of her daughter's wish to have sex with her male care-taker, "A mother knows."  

I am also a mother, and I had a mother, and I know that a mother doesn't always know.  But this theme interested me very much in terms of  plays I was familiar with before I saw Katie:

The mother in The Glass Menagerie knows that her daughter needs a gentleman caller who will eventually marry her and take care of her and the family in a way that her son Tom wants to escape.

The mother in The Light in the Piazza knows that her developmentally disabled daughter can find happiness in a normal life if she doesn't reveal her daughter's mental age  to the Italian man in love with her.  

After seeing  Katie and participating in the talk-back afterwards, my son and I saw   Miss Saigon, and Dear Even Hansen.   At the end of the week, we discussed the notion that a mother knows.

In Miss Saigon, the mother knows she would give her life for her son, and when she's convinced that her child's only chance at a good life is being adopted by his father and his wife, she kills herself so that she will not be an obstacle in the way of the adoption.

In Dear Even Hansen neither mother knows what's going on in the life of her son.  Of course, they don't spend almost every  moment of every day with their sons either!

To be continued...

Some French from the Broadway Musical "Subways Are for Sleeping," 1961

This doesn't really fit into the theme of SF Vistas, but I keep hoping "Subways Are for Sleeping" will come to 42nd Street Moon, as I think it was once going to.  (Or am I thinking of "Skyscraper"?)

This morning, Samba and I used the first part of our French hour to write down the words, which I had trouble understanding:

Allons enfants, le jour de gloire est arrive.  Bebe Suivez.  Chaque jour n'arrive qu'une fois dans la vie
Sur le pony
Pont d'Aligon on y danse
Yet commence.
Chaque jour n'arrive qu'une fois dans la vie.
Maintenant, demain c'est un mot qui n'existe pas
Embrasse-moi, Mama
Et ne pensez plus on temps perdu
Allons enfants
Vous etes comme honkytonky et wow
Une fois on voit le soleil qui brille
Une fois on a la cle de la ville
Une fois on peut crier "A ba la Bastille!"
Amour, toujours right now!

In Memory of My Loving Sister Missy, 1950-1994

One of Missy's three beautiful daughters showed an interest in this poem when she spotted it on the mantelshelf in my house, and I love it too.  Suzy, our youngest sibling, wrote it.  I've re-typed it below in larger font.

Easter, 1960?

Matching dresses, mother-made

Yours with yellow ducks

Mine, lavender bunnies

Two brown-haired girls smiling

My hand in yours

Summer four years later

Squatting in the dirt

Our backyard baseball diamond

Snowball posing too, fluffy white

We smile at the camera

Your pixie, my crooked braids.

You'd pedal a blue bike

Me on the seat

Up Forrest Drive

To the donut shop

Knowing the clerk would whisper

"Y'all like a lemon-filled today?"

Your talkative friendliness, the welcome currency

Then back towards home

Down Forrest Drive to Stratford Road

Me perched on handlebars

You pedaling strong

Saturday night, the Stones

You me David

Entire jars of Spanish olives!

Spaghetti--from a can!

And a peacock spreading a tail of living color.

Bedtime, 

Our white and turquoise room upstairs

Double-bed beside the window

Watching pines against the sky

Moments in our childhood 

Like squares of an afghan

Sewn together like a lifetime of warmth

You and me

Sisters.

Are the Black-clad, Masked "Antifa" Planted to Discredit Us and Create a Police State?

Are the black-masked "Antifa" being planted by the Right Wing to make us liberals look hypocritical, dangerous, and hate-filled?

The so-called Antifascists use fascist tactics like the forcible suppression of opposition and seem much more like a gang than a group of protesters.

  Do they want the police state that will result if, causing 400 police officers to move away and beating protesters, they justify bringing in the militia?

Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? 

Are we going to have to have counter-protesters to counter-protesters?

Chancellor Carol Christ is correct.  Shutting down antithetical views is un-American.

The Antifa are Trump supporters' best new means of recruit.

Library Sing-along Includes a "Downtown" Quite Different from Ours

At a sing-along this afternoon, I couldn't help marveling at the lyrics of "Downtown."  I think even at the time it was written there were some critics who said it represented escapism at its worst, but now "Downtown" is anything but escape!

 We sang "Sing," "Close to You," Blowin' i the Wind" 1962, "Country Road," "Leavin' on a Jet Plane", "The Sound of Music, "My Favorite Things," "Edelweiss,"  Climb Every Mountain," "Getting to Know You," "Que Sera Sera," "As Time Goes By," "Young at Heart," "Today," Tomorrow,"  "Over the Rainbow." "Downtown," and "When I'm 64."
There were a couple of funny "connections" that occurred to me while we were singing.

First, with "Country Road," the John Denver song, I told them that Javier, my MEQUE (Mejor Que Un Esposo), sings that song with a Spanish accent because he's from Costa Rica, and I enjoy his nostalgia about West Virginia!  A singer-along from Taiwan said the Taiwanese sing it too!  West Virginia is wherever the heart is!

The other connection was even funnier:  When I heard "Tomorrow," I remembered who had taken me to see Annie, and it was the husband of a woman who's now a close friend--before they were married.  Then I realized that the woman, Eileen, was the sister of the guy leading the singing, Cliff, and when I shared this with my friend Robert and his wife Shirley, I realized that they knew Eileen because she was the director of Peter's Place when their children were going to pre-school there!  So the song "Tomorrow" reminded us of yesterdays and todays.

I had tears in my eyes at the end of "Blowin' in the Wind" because it's still so on the mark, and I've always thought "Downtown" was a rousing but escapist song, and now the lyrics don't quite fit what we see downtown!  Now we need to escape FROM downtown.

A man originally from France said there was a French version of "Que sera sera," but the words weren't an exact translation, and the only English in the song was "Que sera sera." (!)    I looked it up later and found the words and a YouTube "performance" from 1957.  In our American version, Doris Day asks her sweetheart, "Will there be rainbows day after day?" but in the French version the singer asks whether she'll always be faithful.  In both cases the answer is "Que sera sera."

The sing-along was a lot of fun!  We sang "Sing," "Close to You," Blowin' i the Wind" 1962, "Country Road," "Leavin' on a Jet Plane", "The Sound of Music, "My Favorite Things," "Edelweiss,"  Climb Every Mountain," "Getting to Know You," "Que Sera Sera," "As Time Goes By," "Young at Heart," "Yesterday," "Today," Tomorrow,"  (See link to film by that title)  "Over the Rainbow." "Downtown," and "When I'm 64."
There were a couple of funny "connections" that occurred to me while we were singing.

First, with "Country Road," the John Denver song, I told them that Javier, my MEQUE (Mejor Que Un Esposo), sings that song with a Spanish accent because he's from Costa Rica, and I enjoy his nostalgia about West Virginia!  A singer-along from Taiwan said the Taiwanese sing it too!  West Virginia is wherever the heart is!

The other connection was even funnier:  When I heard "Tomorrow," I remembered who had taken me to see Annie, and it was the husband of a woman who's now a close friend--before they were married.  Then I realized that the woman, Eileen, was the sister of the guy leading the singing, Cliff, and when I shared this with my friend Robert and his wife Shirley, I realized that they knew Eileen because she was the director of Peter's Place when their children were going to pre-school there!  So the song "Tomorrow" reminded us of yesterdays and todays.

I had tears in my eyes at the end of "Blowin' in the Wind" because it's still so on the mark, and I've always thought "Downtown" was a rousing but escapist song, and now the lyrics don't quite fit what we see downtown!  Now we need to escape FROM downtown.

A man originally from France said there was a French version of "Que sera sera," but the words weren't an exact translation, and the only English in the song was "Que sera sera." (!)    I looked it up later and found the words and a YouTube "performance" from 1957.  In our American version, Doris Day asks her sweetheart, "Will there be rainbows day after day?" but in the French version the singer asks whether she'll always be faithful.  In both cases the answer is "Que sera sera."

They sang one or two other songs after I'd left to mail a packet to a friend in need of some cheering up.

Here's a link for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, the film that came to mind as we were singing the three songs with those titles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Rrj3LgAPs

Young at Heart, the 1954 film that apparently only I had ever heard of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFWG0iR3DYc

"True Love" from High Society.

Not a Very Happy Ending but Like a Fairy Tale

There's a homeless man in my neighborhood.  The only thing  I know about him aside from his behavior on the street is that his first name is Larry.

  A couple of years ago, I walked him over to the Manor Cafe and paid for a meal for him, but I didn't really feel good about the way I did it.  I was in a hurry, and I just basically gave the owner of the Cafe money for his meal.

A couple of months ago, when Larry  asked for a handout, I told him I didn't give money to people on the streets, that I give it instead to organizations to help people on the streets. 

He said, "That's phony.  That's an excuse."

So when I heard about HandUp, an organization designed to help specific individuals on the street, I bought a couple of their gift cards--$25 each. 

https://handup.org/members#category/spotlight

 Here's how it's laid out.

I carried around two cards for a while and never saw Larry, so I gave one to a woman who was begging on the street.

Then one day recently, I saw Larry lying on the street and took a picture.

For some reason, as soon as I got it onto my computer, it became my Desktop photo!

This reminded me of a fairy tale in which a woman promises to come back to the man holding her captive because her captivity is part of the bargain--compensation for what her father has taken from this man.   But she forgets, and then she has a magic mirror showing him dying of heartbreak  because she hasn't kept her promise.

A few days ago I saw Larry on West Portal, and I said,  "Hi, Larry.  How are you doing?"  He said he'd been sick, and I told him I was sorry and brought out the $25 gift card.  He refused it!  He wanted a hand out, not a HandUp!

I then gave it to another panhandler.

The next time I saw Larry, he accused me once again of not wanting to help.

 I said, "You refused the twenty-five dollar gift card," but I didn't tell him about his being on my Desktop every time I turn on the computer!

I'm happy to say that with Jonathan's help at 3000 miles away, I was finally able to get Larry off of my Desktop!

Stern Grove Crowds in Really Nice People!

I have to admit that I was disappointed and a little bit put-off by the Stern Grove table-of-twelve configuration at the San Francisco Ballet performance today!

It had occurred to me that my donation of $500 would pay for only six-eighths of the table, but I never thought we'd have only half of a table.  They may say that two tables are put together under one tablecloth, but we were going to be squished!  We had so much food that I wasn't sure there would be room for any people, even us.

It turned out, though, that people were really nice, and having them at the table enhanced the experience instead of making it uncomfortable.  It helped that two women chose to sit on a rock behind us--close to the mother of one and the husband of another.  (We had set up when they arrived, but we honored their request to move down so they could be closer to their family.)

We were also seated with a couple from Cupertino, who came up from Pebble Beach, where they were house-sitting.  It was her birthday, so it worked out really well that I'd made a chocolate cake!

We shared our food, which was plentiful and delicious!  Olga made eggplant wraps and a carrot salad, and Eileen made a farro salad.  I made veggie kebabs, corn bread, sauerkraut with apples and vegan sausage, and Olivie Salad.

Here are, starting with Olga and going clockwise, Olga, Mikhail, Sue, Mike, Charles, Eileen, Javier, me, Jim and Louise.

 A better view of Jim and Louise.  Can you believe he's 82?!

Sue, Mike, Charlene, Debora(h)

Mike and Charlene

Music Is Secure at Kaiser

I heard piano music when I got to Kaiser for a bone density test, and I was so glad that my hearing was unimpaired (as far as I know).

I followed the music to the third floor and found out that the pianist was a security guard.  He plays the piano every day before he begins his shift.

I told the other security guards lined up around him, "I guess you all are waiting your turn at the piano?"