In Search of the Groundhog on the Hidden Garden Steps

Yesterday I walked on a mission to find the groundhog we heard about on the second leg of the Crosstown Trail (Glen Park to Mountain Lake) with guide Karen Rhodes, who was kind enough to fill me in on some details I missed: Sherry Boschert, who was one of the neighbors involved in the Hidden Garden Steps (16th Ave. at Kirkham St.) tiling project, said that the artists, Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr, acknowledged the many donors to the project by firing stairway tiles with their names. However, they began learning, one by one, of misspellings. So, one by one, they would re-do them. They joked that this felt like the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day," so they fired a tile with a groundhog and placed it on one of the bottom risers.
 

Jim Herlihy's podcast The San Francisco Experience Now Has a Website

 Here's the link for Jim Herlihy's podcast The San Francisco Experience along with my message to him, now an open letter!

Https://www.thesanfranciscoexperiencepodcast.com

Hi, Jim!

I've been meaning to tell you that I noticed the new square representing the San Francisco Experience podcast, but until I looked at your website just now, I didn't know that you had a visual for each podcast.

I've been listening with interest.  

Your website looks good, and I think it will be good to add an interview, as you did when you interviewed a friend who'd written a book and then yourself.  Have you thought of interviewing Gary Kamiya and Paul Madonna?

I'm surprised you still haven't done a podcast about the Crosstown Trail or the SF Chronicle's New 49-mile anything but Drive Trail or Walking SF's 49-Mile Drive.  I'd like to hear about your own trails too!

Are you going to have something on celebrating the holidays during the pandemic?  Or on the parklets?  I'm representing Mothers Out Front on the Voices for Public Transportation, and someone  was commenting that even though people can't dine on the parklets during this lockdown, at least the cars aren't there.  Today's newspaper reports that emissions have dropped 7% during the pandemic, the biggest drop ever.

Today after I write more thank you letters, I'm going to walk from West Portal to Kirkham and 16th to see the groundhog in the bottom step there at the Hidden Garden Steps.  Do you know why the artists put the groundhog there?  It's a funny story!

Tina  

Who Charlie Sava of the Charlie Sava Pool Should Be Remembered

I had the vague recollection that Charlie Sava, whose eponymous pool is across the street from me, was a coach, and I finally got around to looking this up.

He was a coach, all right, and what a coach!

 https://ishof.org/charlie-sava.html

CHARLIE SAVA (USA)

1970 Honor Coach

FOR THE RECORD: Coached 10 straight US women's swimming team titles; Swimmers won 42 individual national titles and 9 relays during period of 1944-1948; His Olympic swimmer Ann Curtis won 35 national championships.

Charlie Sava was the honor coach of champion swimmers from Ann Curtis to Lynn Vidali.  From 1944 through 1948, Sava's San Francisco Crystal Plunge Swim Club won 10 National AAU Women's swimming team titles in a row.  During this record "splash", Charlie's girls won 42 individual national titles and 9 relays.  Sava's greatest swimmer, Ann Curtis, won 35 National Championship gold medals.

 

Sava and his swimmers never had the money to fly or take the train.  Their cross-country auto trips to national championships were rugged but fun.  The swimmers' routine on these trips was two workouts a day, two restaurant meals, and all the raw vegetables you can eat.  Among Sava's pupils on these trips was Marion Olsen, now Marion Olsen Kane, the reigning all-time most successful coach in synchronized swimming.

 

Sava attended the first Red Cross Aquatic School in 1925 with Hall of Famer Commodore Longfellow, and he helped Hall of Famer Beth Kaufman iron the kinks out of early age-group swimming with rules and practices that have required few changes.

 

Sava used interval training "repeats" as early as 1949 and he is generally credited with freeing the freestyle kick form the knee to the hip.  He took Hall of Famer Vickie Draves to her first Nationals after helping her break a West Coast discrimination problem against Orientals.

 

For his total domination of women's swimming over a five-year period, as a dedicated water man for 50 years, and for helping to turn champion swimmers into champion women, the International Swimming Hall of Fame honors Charlie Sava.

Ground Hog Tile for a Too-Oft Repeated Correction

 The Crosstown Trail from Glen Park to Mountain Lake, led by Karen Rhodes, took us last Christmas up and down quite a few (hundred) steps.  The most intriguing story I heard about the beautiful tiles steps was that they had to correct errors in the spellings of the people they were honoring so often that they felt they were in the story of Ground Hog Day.  

I wondered about that tile, which doesn't appear in any of my photos, so I asked Karen Rhodes, and this is what she said:

Here is the story, as I recall it from Sherry Boschert, who was one of the neighbors involved in the Hidden Garden Steps (15th Ave. at Kirkham St.) tiling project. The artists, Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr, acknowledged the many donors to the project by firing stairway tiles with their names. However, they began learning, one by one, of misspellings. So, one by one, they would re-do them. They joked that this felt like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, so they fired a tile with a groundhog and placed it on one of the bottom risers.

Why I Love My Dentist

 For my 75th birthday instead of having a super-spreader party I'm writing 75 thank you letters to people who have enriched my life.  Would you believe that my dentist is one?    I actually look forward to and enjoy my dental appointments even when she isn't wearing a giants smock as she was today.  Shawna has retired and Uni was the new assistant, but Dr. Jee is still there.  She's warm, caring, and fun to talk to--or listen to.  She's compassionate not only towards her dental clients but towards the world at large.  She was telling me that she thought it would be good to write thank you letters to the people who've gotten us through this pandemic.

I'll write one of my 75 to her!.  

Chinatown Murals

 Erika and I met in Chinatown to see the murals and remember Juliette, her beautiful little dog no longer with her. Milou's presence was a comfort. We walked along a very deserted Grant Avenue and a not-deserted-enough Stockton, and then revisted Joice Street and Dashiell Hammett, finally coming back through Union Square. These photos show some Chinatown murals as well as deserted Grant Avenue. The first photo is my favorite!

The December 9th Meeting of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee to Postpoine Closing Homeless Hotels

 Here's the info on Facebook:

The Board of Supervisors budget committee will be holding a hearing on legislation, sponsored by Supervisor Haney, that will mandate that the hotels stay open and remain housing people until an adequate plan with real housing options is developed.

Watch the Board meeting with us and give public comment supporting the legislation and let the Mayor know that the dismantling of the hotels during a corona virus surge must stop.

Watch at sfgovtv.org

To join our zoom watch session, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZUpf-6ppzMoG9dKBULePrTDd...

PUBLIC COMMENT CALL-IN
1 (415) 655-0001 / Meeting ID: 146 622 0460 # #

The meeting starts at 10:30 am, but the time of the item is not certain, so stay tuned for updates about when the SIP hotel hearing will begin.

Send an email to the Mayor: https://actionnetwork.org/.../stop-the-plan-to-shut-down...