Showtunes and Mom's Influence

In mom's obituary we wrote that we, her children, were grateful for her introducing us to "show tunes, Tom Lehrer, Nichols and May, a love of nature, a lively exploration of ideas, and a compassionate inquisitiveness about the world."  I'd begun that phrase and Suzy and Jonathan added to it.  Now that I'm reading the fascinating Something's Coming, Something Good:   West Side Story and the American Imagination by Misha Berson, I want to come back to that phrase "show tunes" even though it wasn't Mom who introduced me to West Side Story.  (It's possible that I introduced it to her.)  Even before I discovered the 78 rpms albums for South Pacific and Oklahoma in the attic, I'd heard people sing-along to show tunes as Mom accompanied them on the piano (and sang along too).  Those show tunes included South Pacific, Oklahoma,  Showboat, Porgy and Bess, and Carousel.  She used to sing me  "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck" from Guys and Dolls.  Show tunes made it possible for me to move from fairy tales to MGM musicals, which my older sister Dana and I used to see both at the theatre in Blackfoot and at the State Hospital, where our father worked and patients saw in the big auditorium on Friday nights.  That was where Dana and I saw Singing in the Rain.  That was also where I saw a live production of Showboat, too--the first live musical I can remember seeing.  "Only Make-Believe" is a song we heard our father sing too.  Even though their marriage was NOT a magical musical, I'm grateful to them both for the sing-alongs that made me believe that when I fell in love, it would be expressed in our singing and dancing down the street, even in restaurants, he would whisper into my ear, "When you're near the murmuring of the breeze becomes a symphony.  A rhapsody."  Granted I didn't have the words quite right.  (Remember how we got the word Mondegreen from "Lady Mondegreen," the way "and laid him on the green" was heard?)

Another example of that was "With a Song in My Heart."

"Heaven knows its importance to me" was what I heard for "Heaven opens its portals to me."

Close enough!  The point it, I knew how to make sense out of the sounds I heard, thanks to my parents.
("With a Song in My Heart" was from a 1929 Rodgers and Hart musical, Spring is Here  But I think my parents had a 78 rpm record by Mario Lanza or Tony Martin from a later era.)

More later...Much more 'cause this is important!

A Metaphor for City College of San Francisco?

After posting the good news about Old Skool and the bad news about CCSF, I went back to bed and dreamed a metaphor.  I was at home when I realized that a lot of people--realtors--were in my kitchen at the back of the house, apparently having an open house. I approached them and told them I was the home owner, and I didn’t know anything about their coming to give an open house.  They were not apologetic.  I clearly wasn’t a consideration for them, nor was my home ownership. I left feeling horrible—both because of their behavior and because they had upset me and caused me to be strident, hurting the karma in my home.  I can’t remember other details of the dream, but I remember that when I came back to the house later, they were gone but some of the food they had served remained, and I took it—apparently to eat it somewhere else--the remains of the unseen!

Today is the Fourth of July, and I've already shared this collage with my office mate.  It's one I made when a couple, former students now good friends, gave me a beautiful necklace that reminded me of the bougainvilleas, which are my substitute for fireworks!  (Can you spot the necklace?)

I'll also share the photo of today's San Francisco Chronicle, laid out to rest.

I've reduced the picture to make it easier to post and open, but it's hard to read in more ways than one.

 It says, "City College loses battle."  But of course the battle isn't over yet.  They told me that my bougainvillea would never grow facing west, and I never even told them about the traffic on 19th Avenue.

 "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul
And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."  Emily Dickinson

-


 

City College of San Francisco and Old Skool

Yesterday I was writing to an east-coast friend, my son's godmother, to wish her a happy birthday and bring her up-to-date on things of mutual interest.  I gave her the long list of retirees from CCSF this year--more than 75--some of whom she knew well.  But I didn't mention the question of CCSF's accreditation.

This should illustrate a phenomenon I was telling her about--the eclipses of my brain.  I told her about our trip to Santa Fe and the fact that it didn't occur to me immediately that a close friend was on our route.  I told her of bragging about my cousin's running the Grand, spending a whole month in a boat on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and not remembering until after we'd left the Grand Canyon that my cousin lived in Santa Fe, our destination!

So of course when I gave this long, long list of wonderful teachers and staff retiring, I failed to mention the reason that some felt that this was the time to do it.  It wasn't because they had lost faith in City College but because the whole year since the "Show Cause" warning last July has been so hard on the morale of teachers, and I really can't think of any group of people who are warmer and more caring than the teachers at CCSF, especially those in the ESL Department.

My oversight in mentioning the question of accreditation is all more remarkabale because the friend I was writing to, someone I met in the Masters in TESOL program at SFSU, was also the one who urged me, when she was teaching at the Civic Center Campus and I was staying at home with my two-year-old son, her godchild, to get a part-time job at CCSF.

Yesterday was such a good day that I lost all sense of time.  I had an upgrade on my iPhone and hadn't yet heard from my son whether or not I should pay $10/month on insurance for it, so I'd left it home when I visited a friend and her husband, who has leukemia.  I enjoyed the visit and felt heartened that he was looking  good and was such a good conversationalist that I lost track of the time--some of which was spent discussing Old Skool Cafe, where he'd played the clarinet the day he learned that he had leukemia.  The staff there--servers and musicians--had given him a plaque with all their signatures, wishing him well, and another card had just surfaced.  It showed the staff at Old SKool Cafe jumping in the air with exhuberance (as they are on their website).

http://www.oldskoolcafe.org/


Inside the card were all their signatures, sending him their best wishes.

So when I got home and saw a message from the friend I'd just left I was thrilled to see a link announcing that Diane Sawyers would be visiting the Old Skool Cafe and doing a segment on it the following week!  What a perfect and perfectly connected finish to the day!

Then I saw the messages saying that the ACCJC were not going to let CCSF keep its accreditation.

I need to add a very long PS to the letter I didn't mail yesterday.  I'll begin with the popular line from the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: 

“Everything will be all right in the end so if it is not all right, it is not the end.” 

 

 

40 Messages and Plans A, B, and C

So where were we?  I'd created these pseudonyms for my friends just in case someone has a sense of privacy stronger than mine:

Betsy,

Jana

Sarah

Lana,

Nicki

and me, Tina (whose sense of privacy does not feel invaded by what I'm writing here.)

            I think I left off on Tuesday evening the day I suggested to Jana that we include Nicki in our walk if all of us could make it on Thursday.  We couldn't, I thought, include Sarah, unfortunately, because even if she'd come back from Spain, she had indicated that she'd need time to catch her breath.  Lana probably couldn’t make it because of a house-related appointment she had that day, but Betsy, Jana, and Nicki and I were on.  I'd thought we'd walk at the Embarcadero, and I'd arrive there by streetcar, but as we exchanged e-mails other possibilities were suggested:  Jana planned on driving--but to what destination, considering that she was limited to 2 hours at the Embarcadero--and she was offering a ride to the rest of us.  Betsy would be taking the ferry over if we were meeting at the Embarcadero, but she also offered to cook for and host us in her town north of Golden Gate Bridge.  I was missing some of these exchanges--or getting them late--because I was deleting my e-mail to get it down from 13 gigabytes, which meant I had it arranged by size, not time received.  I also lost my credit card, but the size of my e-mail Outlook was of much greater a concern to me.

            I think by this time, Sarah had let us know she was back, so we'd invited her, another birthday babe, to join us.  She had suggested the Arrow as a meeting place. 

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Take-a-bow-Sculptors-Oldenburg-and-van-Bruggen-2709280.php

             Betsy had suggested Peet's Coffee at the Embarcadero as a meeting Place.  

            I was about to make another suggestion, based on the article on Thursday morning--but now I'm getting ahead.  

            I hadn't seen Jana's suggestion that we go to the Plant for lunch.  In fact, I hadn't thought about where we were going to eat at all.

            Wednesday morning was when Betsy and I got the good news that Sarah, back from Spain, could join us.  We shared this with Jana.  Most of the time Nicki, having trouble with her Reply button, had been mostly out of the discussion, so we wound up with two meeting times--10 as Betsy suggested and 12 as Nicki suggested, adding that she had to leave town Thursday evening.

            By this time, I'd also passed on to Jana the offer Betsy had made to host us north of Golden Gate Bridge and lead us on a walk there.  I'd waited because I wanted Betsy to find out Nicki's preference, but Nicki was having trouble responding, so we could no longer wait for her to state her preference.

             Jana liked the idea of crossing Golden Gate Bridge, but by the time she knew about it, Betsy no longer thought it was an option.  But she did extend an invitation for Friday.

            So...we pick up on Wednesday morning, when I was trying to track down my missing credit card. It's 8:57 AM, and I've just responded to Betsy's offer to host us--once she's cleared it with Nicki.

            Jana had a lot of family things to attend to, so I wanted to help her out by arranging things with Sarah and Nicki.  However, because I was trying not to bother her, Jana didn't know I was trying to arrange things, so she was arranging them too.  She had suggested For Mason and Greens.

            At 5:55 PM on Wednesday night, I appealed to the heroic, asking that someone make a decision, and it would be nice to have the input of our birthday babes.  (I use the word babes for alliteration and certainly with complete respect for these friends, who are intelligent women belonging to a birthday group I dubbed "Beautiful Birthday Babe" in our "Beautiful Birthday Babe Bunch.")  I implored, "We need a dictator.  Who will the heroine be?  Or should we just take some heroin?"

            Betsy, doing a play on words with drugs, said, "Tina, you crack me up." She wanted Nicki and Sarah to decide and let us know. 

            At 6:29 PM, Sarah valiantly entered  our e-world with her offer:  "I will be the decision maker!  I love the Embarcadero and taking BART there would be perfect for me and easy for Betsy to get to on the ferry.  Let's compromise and meet at 11 am at the bow and arrow structure!  After that, I humbly resign and leave the rest of the planning to you all.  Does this sound good?  Any dissent? 

            After she'd spent the evening with family matters, Jana sent a message saying, "That's fine with me."  She also said she was driving and invited others to go along.  She would park on Delancey Street at the end of Brannan, where she could park for two hours.

            Sarah responded at 11:33 PM , offering her handicapped placard, which had no time limit.  She would meet Jana at Jana's place at 10:30 on Thursday morning. 

            Then Nicki got through to us, asking where we'd have lunch.  She wouldn't be joining us on our walk but would come for lunch.  She also suggested that Jana get an app for "Let me know where you are every moment" or just send a hit of heroin.  She added, "Got that, NSA?"

            Jana replied at 11:34 that Nicki could be at her house at 10:30 or so.  "I didn’t think we decided where to eat.  I'll call the Plant tomorrow to see if we'll need reservations...about 11:30?  We'll park in a garage."

            But I  missed those messages, so the next morning at 9:16 AM, I sent my own contradictory message:

            "With all our efforts at figuring out where we were going, we neglected where we're eating  I just looked at the Slanted Door and see they might have openings at 11:00 and 11;30 and 2:00 but not at q2w:00 or 2:30, which I first logged in."

            Notice how my message reveals complete unawareness of the proposed plan to eat at the Plant at Pier 3!

            After seeing the OTHER (one of the other?) plans, I sent a PS:

            "Oh, I'm sorry!  I didn't see this because my e-mail was organized according to size!  Please ignore my message."

That was at 9:21 AM on Thursday.  At 9:48 Nicki sent a message, "I'll meet you at the Plant at 12:00."
            Jana replied at 9:50:

"Okay.  I was about to call them to make reservations for 11:30.  I'll make them for 12.  Nicki, do you want me to come by and pick you up at 11:30?  Oh, are the rest of us still meeting at the bow and arrow at 11?

            Then at 10:13 she sent another message:

"Open table says they don't have a table at noon.  I called the restaurant.  What time are the rest of us meeting?  Still at 11:  I called the Plant and am hoping for a call back."

            At 10:02 Nicki sent a message identical to the one she'd sent at 9:48:  "I will  meet you at the restaurant at 12:00.  Thanks."  This might have just been a second click on "Send."  But it showed no awareness that things weren't certain at The Plant.

At 10:15 Jana wrote, "We can go to the Slanted Door from The Plant if we want.  Something will work out."

            Then I happened to see an article on Ruth Asawa, and one of the sculptures pictured happed to be at the Embarcadero.  So I walked to West Portal and took MUNI to the Embarcadero, where I asked a man setting up a booth where 133 Embarcadero was.  He didn’t know but kindly left his booth (unattended, which seemed to worry me more than him) and showed me a map on another side of Embarcadero Plaza. Then I asked him whether he knew where the arrow was, and he shook his head but later ran after me to point in the direction I was, happily, going.  It turned out that Ruth Asawa’s Aurora was right across the street from the arrow, where Sarah had suggested meeting.  (Behind in my reading and still looking at my e-mail by size, I’d completely missed the messages from Betsy about meeting at Pete’s at the Ferry Building.) 

             It wasn't far to the Ruth Asawa sculpture, but when I got there it was noisy, so I sent Sarah an e-mail about where I was--just across the street from the meeting spot she'd suggested-- and then, realizing that I didn’t have Jana’s cell phone, I called Sarah on her cell phone.  I told her about the Ruth Asawa sculpture and the photo-op it provided--just in case she hadn't seen my e-message. 

             I gave her the address and said again that it was across the street from the arrow!  She told me that they were on their way, but  Betsy had called saying she might be late.  I was early but enjoyed the scene.  Betsy came along about 10 minutes after I got there, and we had the chance to talk while we waited for Jana and Sarah.  It was a hot day, but we wanted to be sure they could see us so we stood out by the sculpture and imagined jumping in the water surrounding “Aurora.”  Betsy and I both got calls, but she got to hers first.  Sarah and Jana couldn’t find us.

            I didn’t hear what Betsy told them, but I don’t think it occurred to either of us to give them the cross street, Howard, which would have made it a cinch.  When Sarah arrived, she said, “Tina, next time don’t change the meeting place!”  or something to that effect.  Apparently they hadn’t found it with the ease Betsy and I had, and I thought that maybe they wouldn’t be in the mood for the group picture I hoped to take.  But they quickly recovered, posed and took turns taking pictures, and then  we walked on to the Ferry Building.

             Somewhere in all this, Nicki, who was meeting us at noon at the Plant, contacted Jana to say she couldn’t find us.  Had she gotten to the Plant early, not seeing the message Jana said about no reservations there?  We walked on past Peet’s Coffee Shop, where Betsy had originally suggested meeting.  But could we really have done without our time at (and getting to) the Ruth Asawa sculpture in the newspaper that very morning?  Something tells me the others were thinking, "Yes!"  But, once I’d gotten us a table and Jana had circled the Ferry Building and Sarah and Betsy had gone to the bathroom and we’d each gone back a couple of times  to where we’d “signed in,” Nicki showed up and we were all seated. 

            By that time, I’d quoted to Sarah and Betsy the Viktor Frankl quote that when everything else is taken away from us, one thing remains—our choice on how to react. 

            I acknowledged that this was said in the context of a concentration camp, not a social luncheon. 

            Anyway, to my surprise and relief, everyone seemed in good spirits and we had a delicious all-vegetarian lunch, which included a salad shown in the SF Chronicle. 

http://www.sfgate.com/wine/pairings/article/Grapefruit-Jicama-Salad-has-the-kick-a-Riesling-2688973.php

*

            In fact there was a follow-up of very warm messages from Betsy, Jana and Sarah, making me aware of what wonderful people they are—even when put the Torturous Planning Test.

 

40 Messages and Plans A, B, and C

The 40 messages and Plans A, B, and C began when another friend and I were planning to walk.  Jana told me that she had walked a couple of times with Nicki, whose birthday was coming up, so when Jana and I were exchanging e-mails about a time to meet, I suggested that we invite Nicki to walk with us on her birthday and then take her to lunch.  Lana, a friend who regularly walks with Jana, might come along too.  I'm not sure that Sarah, who counted 40 messages when we finally got together last Thursday, even knows about those first messages.  It's also funny that Sarah was there to count because I'd checked with her about her June 30 birthday even earlier, and she answered me from Madrid, where she was doing so much that she thought she might need a vacation from vacation after she got back.  

I checked first with Jana, who said "That might work," and I should have paid more attention to her might.  But on Tuesday morning around 7:30  I contacted Nicki and invited her, and when she accepted just before 9:00, I contacted Betsy, who's part of our usual birthday group and asked whether she'd like to join us on this walk along the Embarcadero that Thursday.  She answered that that sounded absolutely PERFECT.  Then she suggested an alternative to perfection:  a walk to Tennessee Valley near Mill Valley.  She also offered to host, and she is a wonderful hostess and cook.  Probably a good guide, too.  But she ended by saying again that she would be happy with us anywhere.  That took us into the morning on Tuesday.

I should mention here that Nicki did mention something about her e-mail not working quite right.  When she was hitting reply, nothing was happening.  But that was just her professional e-mail--that we could delete.

Nicki said she would let Jana, who had taken the walk before, "plot out a starting point and lunch destination."  She said she'd go along with whatever was planned.

Around this time, Betsy contacted Nicki to alert her to a phone message she had left about Nicki's upcoming birthday.  Betsy said the Embarcadero walk sounded like fun, but an option would be to walk over near her home north of Golden Gate Bridge, along the redwood train out of Mill Valley or Tennessee Valley to the beach.  Betsy offered to cook ahead and serve up lunch after.  But the Embarcadero was fine with her too. 

 In the afternoon Jana sent an e-mail saying that there were a lot of places to eat along the Embarcadero.  "
"I was thinking of taking the car but can only think of 2-hr parking in the area.  We can always walk back to the car and move it (even to a parking garage) or take a chance that those DPT devils wouldn't check exactly at 2 hours.  Or we could walk directly to our lunch destination and then be back to the car in time to move it somewhere for more of a walk."

I said I would walk to West Portal and take a streetcar.

Betsy said she would take the ferry from Sausalito and meet us wherever we decided.

Jana said we could coordinate more later and meet at various places and go by car. 

'There's a restaurant called "The Plant" that I've never tried.  It's on Pier 3.  It's only about a mile from where I would park.  We could walk (20 minutes), have lunch and walk (or run or take cab) back to car.)'

I sent back a message saying, "Sounds good!"

But I had been told by a Smart Computer genius that I needed to delete some of the 13 gigabytes of e-mail I had in Outlook, so I was busy transferring the 20+ megabytes of photos a cousin sent me on the anniversary of her mother's death, and I wasn't paying enough attention to the details--or to making sure that everyone knew what they were.  It was only a few hours later that I mentioned Becky's generous offer to host.

To be continued...