Chrysalis4

Settling In

2010-04-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

After a dinner of Animal Crackers and wine on the porch swing, I've settled in. Back in October we left everything in the Emma House impossibly clean, thinking how fine it would be to come back and gradually clutter it again. So far there haven't been any surprises except one. The ivy that grows around the back porch has worked its way under the house, up through the bathroom floor, inside the door facing, and out into the bathroom. And yes, I'm going to leave it here.

Weigh Day, Weigh Day

2010-03-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

Every couple of months we have to return to the scales, take a deep breath, look down, and get real. It's time to cut back the two treats we love most in San Francisco: crusty artisan bread and Napa Valley wine. Besides the scales, there are other reminders. Like the full length mirrors in yoga class, or the jeans that, after all this time, must have been dried too hot.

Our neighborhood is full of ethnic and eclectic treats. John Campbell's Irish Bakery has hot cross buns during Lent, and Irish brown bread and blueberry scones all year round. Across the street is the Russian Bakery, with huge anise-flavored cookies and mounded meringues in pastel colors, so large they look like a pink, yellow, and white mountain range in the window. The folded meat pies are hamburger-onion delicious in the same way as White Castles. Enjoy now, be sorry later.

There's Starbuck's banana bread, and Pete's coffee with biscotto for the dipping. Royal Ground boasts a glass case with full-blown desserts: chocolate cheesecake, red velvet layers, and pumpkin pie with a whipped cream option. The only guilt-free treat is at Java Beach, an internet coffee-shop where Judah St. meets the sea. Their grainy bran muffins are the size of a cantaloupe and the perfect accompaniment is a steaming cup of chai. Calories, yes. But to deserve this snack you must hike down through the park to 49th Avenue, along Speedway Meadow, past the buffalo range, Spreckles Lake, and the Angler's Lodge. Then skirt the ocean for a couple of blocks to the outdoor tables at Java Beach. You'll burn off the calories on the walk back home. Or at least that's what you say.
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photo: panini and tomato bisque soup from a restaurant in the Marina

Mixed Metaphors

2010-03-13T15:55:00.000-08:00

With houseguests we travel the city, coast, and outlying areas as if we're seeing San Francisco for the first time, and that's how it feels. Last week I toured Alcatraz with Mason. As we followed a circular path to the top of the rock, I remembered Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy--its wind-battered arches and sharply ascending pathways.

Any joy I felt on this small island was erased at the sight of the cell blocks, two tiers of cages hardly large enough to hold the regulation cot, toilet, and bowl-sized sink.

The next day's journey was a hike through Muir Woods. If the cell blocks of Alcatraz suggested ultimate confinement, then this grand canyon of sequoias stood for unbridled freedom. At every side, lush ferns and mosses presided over rocky creeks. Above us, arms of the sequoias soared to touch a white-paper sky, barely acknowledging that they, like us, were rooted in the soil.

Chinese New Year Parade

2010-03-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

Another dragon. A few kids' moms were helping steer the dragon from underneath...not a job for the faint of heart

More kids from Asian immersion schools

Kohala Photo Ops

2010-02-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

The upper point of the Big Island is called Kohala. It's a region we haven't seen at all, so on this last day in Hawai'i, we once again lace on the hiking sandals and head north. I've adjusted to the fact that The Big Island isn't all that big; the trip will take a few hours but not the entire day.

Kohala is the oldest part of the island, and upturned a'a has changed into something resembling soil. The ocean is to our left and washboard roads lead to the water. Finally the highway dead-ends at a small settlement called Hawi. There's an ice cream shop and a dozen or so Galleries, or upscale muu muu shops. We have an expensive single dip of coffee ice cream with chocolate chips, sit in the shade and get one of the locals to snap our photo.

The road east from Hawi goes only one place, and that's to the Pululu overlook. The guide book said for the best photos, take the trail. There was no trail in sight, only many tourists who, like us, had inched their cars off the road for a better view.

We shot way too many frames of this and even so didn't get a shot that does it justice. What's missing is a brooding sky to the east, a strong wind off the ocean, and the glaring face of the farmer whose fence row we were crowding.

After a salad and more last minute shopping back in Hawi, we headed down the center of the region, traveling the length of a volcanic spine that must have been slightly to the windward side. The hills were so lush we could have been in Ireland.

Everywhere

2010-02-17T19:17:00.000-08:00

There are little altars, memorials, and offering bundles everywhere. In the black a'a fields, white pebbles trace out a cross and a name.

Stones are aligned on an ancient heiau with such focus on balance and rhythm that they almost speak. I try to listen, but it is a lost language.

Past the coffee plantations, a tree is festooned with orchid leis, sparkles, and yellow hibiscus. My eyes say, "It's a celebration," but my heart knows otherwise.

Birthday, Snorkel Day, Whale Day

2010-02-16T18:05:00.000-08:00

We set the alarm this morning and rushed through breakfast buffet to make it to the snorkeling excursion on time. The boat was small and the two girls piloting it were college students. Maybe. But we hopped on anyway, all slicked down with 80 proof sunscreen and carrying the waterproof camera we got yesterday at Hilo Walmart.

Ira seemed tentative about the whole excursion. I was most worried about cold water. The Big Island Revealed says water temp in Hawai'i is consistent year-round, but it IS February.

We took the long route to Captain Cook Beach and saw a sea cave and some lava flows that can't be accessed except by boat. We learned once more about a'a and pahoehoe, the two types of lava. Then we each received a pair of flippers in our own size, along with a snorkeling mask and tube. In time we got our gear on the right way and slid over the side for some serious snorkeling. The water was warm. We could see a large coral reef about 15 feet below us, and schools of Needle-Nose fish and orange Tang fish, no doubt named for the breakfast drink. Periodically we all had to paddle around, cough, and clear the salt water out of our masks.

We each had a snack of Fritos and papaya while the girl-pilots dropped a hydrophone into the water so we could listen to the singing of the Humpback Whales. Their calls echo, and are like a cross between mooing and howling. Whales from each region have one common song and that song becomes more elaborate each time the whales return to their breeding ground. According to the guides, the song of the whale is not just noise but indeed a melody, with a beginning, guitar break, and end.

A Day of the Unexpected

2010-02-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

Today we drove through the saddle-shaped valley from Kona to Hilo on the other side of the island. I was expecting it to be bumpy, long, and barren but most was red-ochre hills against the green-violet shapes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. We dodged potholes and wild turkeys for the first ten miles or so, but otherwise it wasn't bad at all.

Hilo was all bright sunlight, another thing we hadn't counted on, though there were puddles everywhere and evidence of bountiful rain in the lush vegitation. The storefronts along Hilo Bay had a well-worn small town feel, as Ira said, "like tropical Scottsville in its heyday." More quality, for sure, than muu muu and shell stretch in Kona. We felt at home in Hilo (maybe because it was Phil and Chris's home for a few years), liked our lamb pita at the Puka Puka, and really liked our Kosmic Cone dipped in chocolate. (We also liked Banyan St., which is pretty hard to explain, except maybe as driving through a lot of old lady's legs.)

Puna is the volcanic triangle on the coast south of Hilo, described in Doughty's Big Island Tour Book as a real outlaw land, where people don't mind setting up housekeeping in the path of an active lava flow. We did see some evidence of that as we drove south from Hilo: there was a white clapboard island house with "Merry Christmas" spray painted in black across the front. And as we neared the coast we saw a wild child --shirtless, shoeless, and with untamed island locks--running toward us in the road. As we neared, he ducked into the most tall and dense vegetation I have ever seen. There was no sign of an opening, but he knew where he was going.

We came upon a painted church and wondered if this might indeed be the last sign of civilization we would encounter. (This is a topic for another day, but the painted churches in Hawai'i are pure magic. )We took photos, put a few dollars in the "Thank you" box, and moved on. At this point we could hear the ocean.

Around the curve the narrow road was barricaded and then barricaded again. There were signs(and more signs) that told us not to drive our (rental) car over the heaping, loopy, jagged, sinister looking mounds of petrified black lava that had engulfed the road. OK, we were really thinking about putting it in gear and climbing over this hellish heap, but maybe we'll reconsider.

A quick left and we were on what (we thought) would be the totally wild and untamed Puna costal ride. Not quite what we had imagined....both more and less wild than we'd envisioned. Straight ahead--total rain forest with trees bending to touch over the road, just flora on steroids, little shop of horrors, what next around the curve??

In answer to that....ocean meets rocky lava like you wouldn't believe. There must be a name for this, mega-spumoni?? No, too many letters for Hawai'in, but the intersection of black stone and sea was quite an opera.

The biggest shock: here were a lot of ritzy houses tucked behind the ferns of Puna, probably owned by people who paid the guidebook man to throw us off the trail. On the left, a hidden design by Frank Gehry? Then a few miles on the right, a shack selling holistic medicines and that green leaf that is not fully legal in the other fourty-nine. And so forth, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Finally we headed back through Hilo, back through Banyan Street and the bay, and up toward Honoka'a, where it did finally rain. In a few minutes the sky cleared and we had a lavender sunset all the way back to Kona, not too shabby a day.

A Crackers and Cheese Day

2010-02-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

Here we are on the Kona Coast and I have to admit it: the highlight of my day was when The University of Louisville Men's Basketball Team upset Syracuse, Beyond that, though, it was a laid-back day that included some early morning pool time and then a walk through Kona's muu muu, shell necklace, and beef jerky district along the sea wall.

Between shops we did notice a few things that mentally, if not physically, took us off the strip: a young boy steering his board around the bay; graceful banyan trees and chattering mynah birds, and the first church of the island (1820s) where someone had obviously found sanctuary--he was stretched out and snoring loudly on the back pew.

Before leaving Kona and driving the six miles back to our hotel on Keauhou Bay we stopped at Safeway for bottle of wine and multiple varieties of cheese and crackers...otherwise known as dining in.

From our deck we could still see a few fish swimming in the still water of the tidal pools. And soon, just the sound of the waves.

Just Venting

2010-02-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

Kilauea Caldera was a real showboat today, belching out snowy steam and so much sulphurious smoke that the pregnant, aged, or infirm were not allowed to play on the rim. After some thought we decided we didn't fit into any of those categories so we hung out around the Jaggar Museum and took photos with the rest of the kids.

Every museum has its hairball and the Jaggar Museum is no exception. Enshrined in a glass case are the clothes Dr. Thomas Jaggar, volcanologist, was wearing when he first set foot into the red hot lava flow in the early 1900s. The shoes are warped and melted, his bush-style slacks are in charred fringes, and his small pick hammer is completely encased in the black stuff. Apparently Dr. Jaggar was doing a close inspection of his special lava, perhaps deciding if it was (1) a'a, rough and porous lava or (2) pahoehoe, which is smooth and ropey. There are no actual photographs of Dr. Jaggar after the incident.

While on Hwy. 11 we stopped at Punalu'u beach, and experienced the black volcanic sand first-hand.

After leaving Caldera we drove a few miles toward Hilo, and discovered that we had been misled all these years. At least in Hawaii, the grass really IS greener on the other side.

Lunch at the Hana Hou and Other Stories

2010-02-12T21:48:00.000-08:00

In our quest to be non-touristos, we headed into Naalehu for some local food. Our tour book recommended Hana Hou, which was one of maybe two restaurants in Naalehu. Besides a turkey burger and Asian slaw, we got Garth Brooks, Chinese lanterns, ceramic red peppers nailed on the wall, a row of white dishrags hanging on a line stretched between back porch posts, and a really good Rocky Road Brownie, my favorite part.

Backing up just a bit, we spent this whole day driving a long loop from our hotel below Kona through coffee plantation country and down to South Point, the southernmost point of Hawaii and the USA. To get there, we hung a right off the main road and traveled a bumpy 12 miles past scattered farm houses, wind turbines, and grazing cows. When we arrived (the end of the road), here's what there was: a huge panorama of cerulean ocean on all sides; a dozen jeep-like cars parked in the dust; five or six macho-sized fishing rods wedged into lava rock ledge, their lines trailing out into the sea; and wow---right in front of us two black humpback whales, breaching, diving, slip-sliding all over the horizon. It was amazing.

Soooo-- after discovering the beautiful blue at South Point, we headed a little further out toward Naalehu for burgers and the Rocky Road Brownie. Which was, now that I think of it, my second-favorite part of the day.

And what she wore

2010-01-25T16:44:00.000-08:00

It’s just a dark brown shawl, not that old, but when I wrap it about me I settle into history and become my great-great grandmother.

The only full length photograph I have of Martha Elizabeth Johnson Spillman Watson is one composed in her middle-age. She’s standing on the steps of the tidy, white frame, gingerbread-trim house that is now the Hickman County Museum.

Nunny--as they called her-- endured the Civil War, a first husband who didn’t come home, a second marriage pierced by deaths of two small sons, and years of widowhood beginning in her forties.Yet on a snowy day during the Great Depression, she chose her attire, walked to her front steps, and regally posed for a picture postcard.

She still had her spirit. She cared what she wore.

Clothes delight me--for this reason and a hundred more. As a five-year-old I’d snuggle against my own grandmother and interrupt her stories to say, “and what she wore was...” I was the costume designer to her tales of young Tina and wild carpet rides . A few years older I scratched out pencil drawings--sophisticates in flaring shirtwaists, cinched belts, and sling-back heels. I was a grown up woman with freedom to design and choose.

The only woman in my family to openly celebrate her wardrobe was my great Aunt Sadie, who fed my growing addiction. From the Hudson’s a few blocks from her Detroit balcony came a scarlet bathing suit edged with a running trim of tiny white balls, a Spanish skirt and peasant blouse, the cowboy boots I'd broadly hinted for. She loved red and I'm sure that's what she was wearing in this photo as she sailed across Lake Michigan. But I remember her best--the age I am now--in a creamy white wool suit, beige stilettos, dark hair caught in a French roll. Sadie understood understatement.

My first wearable design was a skirt stitched from one of my brother’s cloth diapers. It fit like an bandage. More attempts would follow, with quiet encouragement and tutoring from Frances who lived up the hill, and unsupressed eye-rolling from Mom. In my teens I sewed sleeveless summer pants-dress that flared from the waist into rippling sail-like legs. The project worked, but my plan for a debut at church was blocked. “No,” my mother said. “No. Period.”

Taboos of the early sixties became the norm in no time. I wore gypsy pairings like a peacock's plume-- navy with avocado, purple paisley with ruffles, fringe and macrame all floating on a bare and over-tanned midriff. I sailed toward college in a sea of beaded bracelets, frayed jeans, and undulating tie dyes. My hair grew past my shoulders, fragile and stick straight, but still I ironed it. Near high school graduation my friend Cherry pierced my ears against an ice cube and I wore delicate silver hoops in full view of my father, knowing it would be far easier to receive forgiveness than permission.

As a college student and young wife my standards matured. Instead of memorizing French (a move I would regret) I once again took up sewing. In September I sashayed to class in orange: flared slacks and a floor-length vest of double-knit, worn over a matching Cossack shirt. In January, The French Lieutenant’s Woman billowed forth in an indigo cape, down 3rd Street in Louisville and across campus for classes in design. A happy time, me and my creations.

After college, a turning point. Newly degreed, we U-hauled to a town perfect for raising two sons, perfect for Garden Club, Country Club. Perfect for wealthy farmers' wives feasting on barbecue. Perfect for library cards and church choir. A tacit dress code reigned for young wives, and I complied with a silent submission reserved for Southern girls. I stirred up corn pudding, dopped off Matt and Kent at school, accepted a part-time writing job, endured.

Deliverance came in the form of a neighbor. Mary Parker –older than my mother–-served me tea and spoke of Europe. She showed me hidden seams of her Chanel-style coat, read with me the silky Braille of an oriental rug, the draping hand of a length of foulard, the hand-tied fagoting of a linen napkin. Her kitchen curtains were a tailor’s dream--stripes joined invisibly, windowpane plaids in architectural alignment. And all so crisply pressed to looked like origami.

She talked with me, and her four-room cottage sang with joie de vivre.

And so my sense of self emerged, its organdy presence unfolding and tentatively taking flight: the day we wore the hats to Keeneland, the floral gardening jacket, tea stained into antiquity at the kitchen sink. A disastrous black-tie dinner, bearable then and in retrospect thanks to a photograph of what I wore: vintage black lace with butterfly sleeves, found in a box in Mom's attic..

Days brightened more with the next relocation A waving line of laundry welcomed me from across the yard, and soon the laundress followed. Barb appeared in my kitchen for coffee, sympathy, and instant bonding in the form of what she wore, what she sewed, and what she dared to hang on the line outdoors. Outlasting subsequent moves and marriages, Barb keeps the taupe silk we bought in Montmartre, shopkeeper muttering and fuming as he converted sixteen yards to meters. Like us, it's undivided, the bold yardage of life.

Lately I’ve culled. Out, out, damn spots, damned prints and animal skins. Out candy pinks, unruly reds. Out, trendy things, spied on a rainy day. But boots can stay until they fall apart. The black skirts stay, and all things taupe, the jeans that fit, ascending stack of black t-shirts. The bracelets, one for every day. And one last remnant of my hippie stage–I’m sorry, Dad-- I've kept my silver loops.

Mary Parker, long dead, still lingers in my wardrobe: a crisp white shirt, purchased for the feel of the fabric alone; a camel-tan coat found at the consignment shop. Not my hue, but so perfectly detailed that I returned twice to look and finally brought it home. My Sadie-shoes, unwearable. Red leather clutch, Key West.

Some pieces should be discarded but I just don't have the heart. Others give me a nameless sense of security. One or two are gloriously impractical, and, like the silk Barb keeps in storage, trail with me from house to house-- the fabric of our halcyon days, our hearts. And what we wore.

The hot and the sour

2010-01-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

This morning our house was power-washed by the most intense rainstorm of the season. First vertical, then horizontal, the downpour came at our sunspace windows with enough roar and force to send us running to see how much damage was being done. Everything was intact, and soon after the worst of the storm the skies cleared for a few minutes before storm two (of three in the forecast) came barreling in.

With a window of an hour at best, Ira and I layered up and charged down the front stairs to embark on day two of our hot and sour soup taste test competition.

Hot and sour soup is, in Asian homes, the catch-all for leftovers. It's chicken soup with vinegar for sour and white pepper for hot. Straw mushrooms and tofu are often added, along with soy sauce, tiger lily buds and thinly sliced pork. Fresh cilantro and pineapple chunks are a bonus. This combination is the perfect cure for the rainy season, a cold, or a generic case of the blues.

If the hot and sour soup in a Chinese restaurant is wonderful, it's a sure thing that the rest of the meal will be even better. With that in mind we've made 2010 the Year of the Soup, a time to review all the eateries in our hood, and to answer the question once and for all: where can perfection be found?

Melisa's (that's with one s) restaurant on Balboa has been named by friends as the best soup in the hood and we began our quest there last week. We were underwhelmed. Melisa's was charming, but the hot and sour we brought home was flat in color and low on ingredients. What was there (tofu, sprouts, mushrooms) was fine but the broth was missing the luscious translucent red-brown color of soy sauce and hot chili sauce. The egg-drop component was a bit heavy for soup. Like scrambled eggs Kentucky-style.

Today's taste test at Tom Kiang on Geary was more successful. We're getting organized and now we have a mental scorecard in place. First, the visuals. Tom Kiang's hot and sour was beautiful, a deep, transparent red-brown. The aroma was perfect. The taste test? TK's soup was full of all the standard ingredients except pork slivers, which we didn't miss. The broth was just the right consistency, not too much cornstarch. But hot overpowered sour by just a bit, adding up to a little white pepper overkill.

We didn't find perfection today, but Tom Kiang did give us a terrific floor show. A Dim Sum restaurant, Tom Kiang specializes in small plates. (You might say Dim Sum is to Chinese as tapas is to Spanish.) So a big meal at Tom Kiang is made of many small appetizers.

We stuck to the plan of having hot and sour soup only, except for one digression--we couldn't resist a plate of four small dumplings stuffed with shrimp and greens. Otherwise our eyes got the feast as waiters and waitresses tempted diners with a non-stop parade of puffy brown pork rolls, glistening pot stickers with sauce, stir-fried greens, shumai (steamed dumplings), and crispy tempura shrimp with beady black eyes and fins intact.

Next week we may try Golden Chopstick on Balboa, or one of the restaurants on Clement. As rough as it is, our search must go on. The perfect hot and sour is hiding out there somewhere, and we'll just have to find it.

And you're beyond

2010-01-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

Today someone took my bike. I left it on the sidewalk by the trash cans with a sign taped on that said, free. And someone took it.

A dark red bike, a coaster, a straw basket wired on back--I bought it on a sunny Saturday when I lived in Lexington, newly single, unattached. A day for a solitary ride.

That day the bike man hauled his twenty or so reconditioned rides to a grassy median in the neighborhood, set up shop as he did every weekend during the summer, and sold each one for whatever he could get. I saw the bike, walked around it, squeezed the tires, hopped on and took a ride down Walton thinking to make the purchase there and then. The pedals worked; the brakes worked; and the size suited me fine.

I liked many things about my coaster: its rich and tasteful color, its tires with crack-crazed and ageing tea-patina’d walls. Most of all I liked the speed with which I could ease to the left out my short driveway, peddle down Cramer, around the playground, and up Bassett toward Kent and Minda’s house. I could pump up their hill, park by the porch, and settle into the swing for a glass of wine. In a world full of complexities, the bike could ease me to my destination with simplicity and efficiency.

When Ira and I moved to San Francisco the bike came with us. We forced it, wheels akimbo, into the already-overloaded van. It was the first item out as well. Here in the avenues and car-less much of the time, I’ve used it to coast down to the post office at Geary and 21st.; I’ve felt very European hopping off at the Richmond Market, filling my wicker basket with red and yellow peppers, beets, fresh dill.

On bright weekends Ira and I would take his bike and mine to the path that follows Ocean Beach. We'd ride against the wind, with the cracker-box houses of Sunset to our left and the misting and glimmering span of the Pacific to our right. Worries about parking and fueling were lost on those rides. I ignored the failing brakes and disengaging gears. For a mere 50 dollars, I had purchased freedom and brought it West with me.

On my first bike getaway, I rode with the Casparian sibs, Pete and Donna, on the winding, road from Clinton to Columbus, bumping over concrete bridges and swerving by stripped tires and aromatic roadkill. We stood and pumped up hills, and coasted between the lower fields. Dad picked us up at the park and documented our journey in snapshots. He treated us to frozen custards before heaping bikes and friends into the back of the farm truck and delivering us safely home.

On a grownup journey years later, my friend Barbara and I crisscrossed the flat streets of Key West on our rented bikes. We dodged roosters in Little Bahama and eased down Duvall and Southard, rolled through the stop sign on Angela and skidded on gravel as we cut around the sweltering cemetery. I can’t recall where we were going on those days, but I remember how we got there, cooled through time and space by the journey itself.

On a bolder expedition we left Gare St. Lazare in Paris, stepped off our train in Vernon and rented bikes to ride the 4 kilometers to Giverny. Already heady with bike-bought freedom we celebrated with an outdoor lunch of roasted vegetables. By the second glass of wine I was sobbing enthusiastically, caught in a circle of emotions brought on by wine and my all-too-recent divorce. I couldn’t finish my meal, and before getting back on our bikes we asked the waiter to package our leftovers for a later dejuner.

He emerged from the kitchen and in his hand was a small white plastic box containing my mushrooms and couscous. This carrier was, he said, a container detached from his own refrigerator. In French the shaken waiter explained to the still-crying me that he since had no carry out boxes, a part of his refrigerator would simply have to do. So–-still tipsy and now laughing--Barb and I hopped back on our wheels and headed to the gardens of Monet. We left sorrow at the table. On a bike it’s just that easy–-get on and you’re beyond.

The childhood bikes, the rental bikes, the breezy San Francisco bikes-- they’re all a blur now, each one in a sequence of photo frames that signal, take me, rent me or to give away. An ending? No. Those frames click toward the next ride, the simple spinning wheels, cool air passing, and carefree moving forward once again.
photographs: Barbara Talan

The Masquerade Ball

2009-11-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

Something there is that doesn't love a...ball. Especially a masquerade ball, where concealing your identity, or at least pretending to, is the objective. But there are ironies involved.

At the fundraiser we attended a week ago, couples and singles filed into the room in festive masks, spiffy cocktail dresses and black suits, dinner jackets, and elegant costumes. A court jester, Marie Antoinette, Spanish ladies, Phantoms of the Opera. We came as polished versions of ourselves, the perfectly coiffed, manicured, the camera-ready people we aspire to be. Why then--of all times--did we want to deny who we were?

A mask would be more appropriate, perhaps, when I dash to Safeway in the early morning, de-coiffed, wearing yesterday's yoga pants and sneakers. Or when the UPS man wakes me from a sound afternoon nap. Or the time I inquired about a husband only to learn that he had left her for another man.

At the post office, a long line waiting behind me, I fumble to pay for a stack of wrapped packages, a sheet of stamps, and two tracking slips. As time stands still I realize that my debit card is in my billfold. It's at home, apparently orphaned by a purse exchange. Or when my dog chooses to relieve herself in the crosswalk of four lanes of 19th Avenue traffic. The light counts down--eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, as cars pause and I scoop. This is when a disguise would come in handy.

There have been stretches of my life when I lived with a bag over my head. Times that I felt depressed, isolated, misplaced, alone. Perhaps on those long days a feathered and sparkling mask would have transported me and created within me a fresh sense of self, a point at which to launch a new, improved, more confident version of who I am...one with streamers, glitter, and just a hint of black lace.

San Francisco: Voices

2009-10-11T17:00:00.001-07:00

Sitting behind two Mandarin-speakers on the bus, I'm transfixed. They are chatting softly, and their language has a sound I don't hear often, a swish-swish sound--as graceful as French. It seems appropriate that Mandarin is the Chinese language of diplomacy--it has a certain dignity and subtlety.

Most of our Chinese neighbors speak Cantonese, the primary language of Hong Kong, the jumping-off place en route to San Francisco. In its native form it's highly tonal, easy to identify and wildly interesting to my Western ear.

Our friend Claudia speaks German-accented English. I can imagine her as a child, conjugating verbs at the knee of her linguist father. Claudia's husband John speaks Russian-accented English, and lapses into Russian when he can't find the right English expression.

Our contractor's booming voice is Irish. "Ay! She's a fine hound," he says to Cleo as he enters the front door. It's the exuberant sound of John Campbell's Pub on St. Pat's Day, rollicking and rough.

John's workmen all speak Spanish. They communicate in smiles and broken English, and I've tried to bridge the gap with what little Spanish I've picked up along the way. They know how to acknowledge my questions and thanks, and I know how to express some approximation of, "please don't hurt yourself doing that."

With everyone speaking his own brand of English, it's a maze of accents. If the conversation stalls, someone in the crowd jumps in to fill in the blanks. Everyone uses certain untranslatable American words. Background noise--a conversation in Cantonese-- suddenly takes shape when the term "traffic school" leaps out of the verbal maze.

Even with its wealth of conversational color, we don't hear much African-American speech in San Francisco, and I miss that. Walking in sunshine on lower Fillmore--the jazz district--I hear the lively, syncopated cadences that were a part of my childhood. These voices wrap around me like a well-worn shawl.
___________
painting: "Voices"
ink and watercolor on silk

SF: On Big Cat Feet

2009-09-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

I don't have a hundred words for San Francisco fog--but maybe a dozen. There's the Morning Fog--a high tent of gray that can break to blue. We awaken to white on white, but there's a hint of light in the east and a prevailing optimism that the ceiling will lift by noon.

The Fog of Haves and Have-Nots. This fog is thickest near the ocean (49th avenue) and extends over our house at 21st. Look toward downtown, however, and weep. The dome of City Hall is gleaming in reflected sunlight. We can easily see where the fog line ends. Our friends on 12th avenue (The Haves) celebrate sun from morning till night, but the gray stuff hovers over us all day like a migraine headache.

The most dense, most depressing fog arrives in July and August. This is the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Fog and it can last weeks. The SAD Fog reminds me of November in Kentucky--days and days of relentless gray. In San Francisco it's triggered by the inland heat. As long as it's 100 in Stockton, this coastal fog will have us by the throat.

When the fog moves in to stay I tell myself--stop whining. Be rational. We wanted to live in The Avenues because this neighborhood hugs the park and extends to the glorious ocean. We can walk (a long walk) to the beach on a Saturday morning, run Cleo in the sand, have a cup of chai at Java Beach, and trudge back through the park...all without getting the car out of the garage. Still...the SAD fog can get really old.

Some fogs are wonderful, such as the Daytime Drama Fog. This random and unexpected fog whisks into the neighborhood on really big cat feet, and floats down alleys and around houses like dense cigar smoke. One minute we can see Balboa Avenue and the next minute it's gone, visibility is near zero, car headlights are on, and even houses across the street have vanished under the white snuggy. This fog cranks up the adrenaline and gives me the same feeling I have when a heavy snowfall moves in to Kentucky. It's a wonder to behold.

When we stand at our front door, 33 steps above the street, we can usually see Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands in the distance. But sometimes the bridge and bay alone are buried in fog. Look toward Golden Gate and it's not there--all you see is a wide white brush-stroke along the horizon.

This might called the Bridge-Swallowing Fog. These days are fun, too, because they bring the foghorns out. Their leisurely two-note call (a perfect fifth) provides a haunting and beautiful musical score through the day.

Often the Bridge-Swallowing Fog and accompanying foghorns stretch into the evening and turn into the Lullaby Fog. On these nights--which can occur all year round in San Francisco--just open the windows, cover up, close your eyes and listen. The fog keeps the street noise at bay, and the fog horns sing all thoughts into oblivion.
_________________________
drawing: "Summer is Foghorn Season"
watercolor and 005 micron pen on paper

Kentucky: Doves

2009-09-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

The mourning doves
trail me
from San Francisco
light
and haunt
with woodwind notes.

I've lived long
been moved, met
stone,
known sorrow, lost,
been taught, atoned. So

lose me, find me
follow me across
wide pools
plains and ranges,

calling: loss is gain,
truth fluid
that which sears,
which burns to keen
will lift to float
and cool you at the end.

SF: L' Opera a la Claudia

2009-09-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

Forget the Bolshoi. For us the ultimate Russian experience is opera-– thanks to Claudia.

She’s eighty-ish, the picture of refinement. We met Claudia and her husband John during our first month in San Francisco. Ira was walking on 21st with Cleo and a Russian-accented voice shouted from across the street, “A whippet!"

Within minutes Ira and Cleo had been snagged and pulled up the stairs of the Markevich’s two-story stucco for a discussion of dog breeds, a viewing of John’s wood sculpture, and a taste of Claudia’s torte. So began our friendship and our introduction to L'Opera a la Claudia.

At $80 a ticket, the SF Opera is too pricey for us attend with any regularity. But free performances do come around and we’ve rapidly learned the truth: Claudia must go. In the four years we’ve known them we’ve shuttled her to opera in the park, chauffeured her to Daily City for opera at the cinema, and have spent whole afternoons at John and Claudia’s house with dog, a bottle of white wine, and--opera on the stereo.

The Markevich’s respective pasts could shape a fine libretto. Claudia‘s father was a scholar–-a German linguist--sent to a POW camp in Siberia after World War I. After his release (traveling through China) he met and married Claudia’s mother, a Russian living in China. So Claudia grew up in Asia and as a young adult met John Markevich, another Russian wending his way through China. Their cultural diversity is apparent in any gathering: Claudia understands Chinese, speaks fluent Russian with John, her immediate family and their Russian Orthodox friends, German with her cousins, and English with us. But her favorite language is music.

So today–-free opera in Golden Gate Park–-Claudia is on needles and pins. She has requested we pick her up a full hour before the performance so we can sit with other Russian friends. As she’d predicted, the park is packed. We find the group, claim seats in the white-chair section reserved for senior citizens, and wait for music director Nicola Luisotti to raise his baton. Picnickers crowd around us, and blankets stretch all the way to the hills.

The food is delicious and bountiful, very Russian and very red: cold cuts on crusty rolls, pickled herring with beets, and red potato salad. I contribute stuffed figs and deviled eggs. I miss having green stuff, but they don't.

We eat and share our wine under a white paper sky and silver disk sun. We hum Donizetti's arias, and smile as we recognize O mio bambino caro from Puccini. The notes are like the birds that float and dart overhead, soaring and then vanishing. Claudia is beaming and tapping time. Ira and I turn to each other and just mouthe, “Click” –- or, “wish we could photograph this.”

Kentucky: The Oakton Mafia

2009-07-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

I keep to myself much of the time while I'm in Clinton, rambling around the Emma House, enjoying an airy space that's not available in San Francisco. But Saturday night's sunset brings me to the window, to the back porch, and out to the car.

A left at Clinton's one stoplight and in a matter of minutes I'm on highway 123, windows down, jetting toward Hailwell Corner. The sun is drifting lower and as it falls the light of the sky becomes even more intense; it separates into layers of silver and gold, crimson, purple and blue. An artist's palette.

Another ten minutes and my car is parked at the edge of our soybean field and I am looking across 140 years of family history--rows that vanish into hills. I want to still the sinking sun but in a matter of seconds the field turns from green to indigo, the puddles of water from Wednesday's rain turn dark, and it is time to move on.

The only wide spot in the road between and Clinton and Hailwell is the community of Oakton. It's emblematic of what has become of the rural South-- the railroad crossing is a rise of asphalt. Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace wave lazily along the tracks. The abandoned post office is a one room structure on a foundation of concrete blocks, its cashier's desk and pigeon holes for mail are masked by boarded windows. But there are still a couple of churches in Oakton, plus a cluster of homes with carefully tended yards. On this Saturday night there are lights in windows, and a short line of trucks is parked outside what once was once Oakton's general store.

Against the store is a sign that reads "Oakton Mafia." The nearly-empty building is brightly lit and there's a small congregation outside on benches that have been there longer than my lifetime. I slow down. I see a lifted hand....the all-inclusive country greeting that indicates, "Hello, whoever you are." I'm not ready to go home so I slow to a crawl and think about pulling in.

The first to recognize me is Bobby Kelly. Known as the mayor of Oakton, he's a man about my age with a contagious smile and off-beat sense of humor. He may well be the creative force behind the Oakton Mafia sign. It's beyond twilight now but I edge over.

"Looks like the boy's club to me," I say.
"Come on, get out," he replies, and I comply, swinging my rental car into the gravel.

I get out, hug Bobby and then realize I know everybody. It's Bobby and his brother Ricky, Mary Ann and Lucas Deweese, mother and brother of Caleb, our farm manager, and Tracy Workman, whose parents are family friends.

The Kellys are known for their good humor and nonstop conversation and I'm promptly drawn into the mix. In the thirty minutes that follow, the sun completely vanishes and mosquitoes start making a meal of us, but I don't leave. We're all looking at a book of photographs--old school houses in Hickman County-- as we pass around the Oakton Mafia's one pair of shared reading glasses. We talk about family and farm matters with an irreverence that keeps the laughter flowing.

Ricky Kelly asks me how I like San Francisco and I tell him it's too cold this time of year for me. He asks what I do in California and for a moment I grapple for an answer. I tell him I walk the dog, go to the park, handle Kentucky farm business on my computer. I don't think to tell him that I try to write every day, and that I have a love-hate relationship with my tubes of watercolor. In context of this Saturday night these things don't come to mind.

There's a bit of a pause and I look around at Mary Ann and Lucas, Tracy, and the Kelly brothers, getting a handle on what matters most. "I really get homesick for Kentucky in the summer."

Bobby Kelly offers me a popsicle from the cooler inside, but I say I should get going. By that time swatting bugs has become a full-time job. It's been fun, and we say goodbyes all around.

I pull out into the two-lane road and look into my rear-view mirror. There's only blackness where the sunset has been. The Oakton Mafia sign recedes from view. I slowly drive through Oakton keeping an eye out for the scruffy brown-furred dog that often lopes along the center line. Passing through farmland I scan the shoulder for the flash of deer's eyes.

It's a rarity for me to drive this way in darkness, but I'm no stranger to the route. On the road from Oakton I know where I am, what's in front of me and what's been left behind.
_____________
"Sunday in the Shop"
photo by Earl Warren, Jr.

For Em: Dogdance

2009-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Before I met you
(even before I met your dad)
I was a dancer.

I was too cool, leaping from chair to couch,
silhouetted by the basement light, arm handles, leg shapes,
battements and plies.

My room upstairs, a studio, for great percussive leaps
(causing the kitchen light to do its own jette’ )
Mom would inquire and I’d just smile and shrug;
practice, you see, is quite the private thing.

I still dance. Mostly while housecleaning. I slipslide and boogie to
Motown, doing a little cha-cha when I footmop the tile.
Cleo and I tango when she’s begging for treats,
And when Daisy comes to visit? A big and joyous
do-si-do.

Crater Lake

2009-07-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

The sudden, unprecedented blue can be explained,
the spectrum pared away, leaving only blue
to dance with electrons in the pure depths,
but it cannot be known, the blue richer than Chartres
that draws the binocular gaze, irresistible and disturbing,
the blue that stares back, like the eye of some god,
through the long lens of the pilgrim who climbs
the splintered rim to find, below the pointing pines,
new angles on perfection, while the still blue enters,
searching among places deeper than the lake,
to sear with what lies beyond camera capture.

(Ira's poem)

Night Window, San Francisco

2009-06-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

Western light is magical. From the north side of the house I can see Golden Gate at the distant right, the shops and homes of central Richmond in the foreground, and Holy Virgin to the left. It's the church that draws me to the window in the evening and I've tried dozens of times to capture it. This shot comes close.

Kentucky: Local residents launch war on shade

2009-05-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

In an move that may spark nationwide interest, residents of this west Kentucky town believe they can-- once and for all --completely rid the town of shade. Beginning in early March, citizens of Clinton, Kentucky launched a grassroots effort to confiscate and systematically destroy all visible tree branches.

J.K. “Rexie” Ross, Clinton cannonizer, is among those voicing support for the effort. “They were everywhere” he said. “You couldn’t see the sky for those things.”

When asked about the origin of the project, most community leaders were stumped.“The idea came from Clinton’s radical core,” one citizen admitted. “But now splinter groups have formed in Fulgham and Water Valley." Oakton has one of the largest limb nullification projects in the area. For weeks at the onset of the project residents worked day and night, abandoning their jobs and rejecting computer and television as “distracting.” Most even resisted cell phone use.

“It’s impossible to log all the hours we’ve given to this effort,” one worker commented. An elderly lady added, "I feel like I've been pulled through a knot hole backwards."

There has been opposition, though largely hollow. One homeowner was seen lumbering aimlessly in his orchard seeking shade. Neighbors believe he has a deeply rooted problem. "He's an indolent sort, certainly not executive timber," one noted.

In this case and others like it, the state department of deforestation takes up the slack, attacking offending limbs with their own bucket trucks and chain saws. The workers are in high spirits. “No hangers in this town,” one barked. “We’ve stripped the place clean.”

With trucks running 24 hours a day much of the tree refuse has been relocated south of town. Once only the size of QE II, the growing wood pile is now roughly the length of Delaware. Ex-zetta Bencini, local journalist, said Clinton residents will bend but never break. “We won’t stop until every branch is gone, ” she said. “This town knows how to stick to it.”

Entrances and Exits

2009-04-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

In Clinton, we’ve got location, location, location. The Emma House is at the intersection of two main highways, across from the post office. The library is just a long diagonal away so I know who returns their books.

We’re catty-cornered from Margaret’s Salon and the Gazette Office. Gaze through the beveled glass on our front door and you’re dead-on with the vestibule of the First Methodist Church. Awkward on the Sundays you want to sleep in.

The afternoon of my arrival—first of the spring-- it’s like a Feydeau play, with multiple entrances and exits, pratfalls, and stock characters. I’ve been on my phone from Fulgham on, lining up the cast.

Enter John Turner, Clinton Water Company. Front yard.
We say hi, how are you, and he gets right to it. He locates the water main cover, leans into the hole and rakes away dead maple leaves. I walk out toward the street and watch while he pries the lid off the water main cover and wrenches it open.

Exit Liz. I trek to the basement to turn on the house main and within minutes I hear the blessed sound. Seems like everything is under control. Exit John.

I go from spigot to spout throughout the house making sure nothing is leaking. I flip on the circuit breaker and know it's a short wait for hot water time. After traveling from San Francisco, the first hot shower is a primal pleasure. In a few minutes I check the water temperature. It’s still like ice.

Back to the purgatory we call a basement. Bad, Bad, Bad. Water is gushing under the porch instead of into the water heater. I go upstairs and into the yard. It’s already a marsh. I revisit to the basement and turn the water off, on, off, hoping for a cure.

I stand and think about it. This is not a John Turner problem unless I want the water off. Sooo. I call Lloyd Callison, plumber of choice and leave a message that I have a problem and there’s no hot water. I sound desperate because that’s what I am. But it’s a Friday night, almost dark, and I doubt if he’s looking for work. Exit Liz. To the side yard.

Enter Steve Hardy. Next door neighbor. I can barely see him behind a huge wood stack running the length of the yard. He waves, and we meet in the driveway. We discuss the ice storm, source of all the fallen limbs. .

With a wry smile, Steve asks me if I’ve noticed the condition of my front yard. Sure enough, I have noticed that it is once again full of branches, a surprise to me since I recently contracted with his son Daniel to clean debris left from the ice storm. He explains that the highway department just came along a few hours ago and did another cutting. The workmen left huge branches where they fell—all over the front yard. He asks if I need his help with the current crop. I tell him thanks, don’t worry about it. Exit Steve. Exit Liz . To front yard.

Enter Daniel, Amanda, and Elana. Steve's children. They have come to help me anyway. I’m grateful. We start pulling limbs toward the street. Some are huge and can’t be rolled so we inch them end by end toward the sidewalk.

Enter Steve with the chain saw. Now everybody is working away. It looks like we can finish the job before dark.

Enter David Prince. David was in my high school class. He hasn’t changed a bit. David offers to help. We talk for a few minutes about last summer’s class reunion. He offers to help again. We talk some more and exchange email addresses for photographs. The sun is starting to go down. Exit David.

Steve and his chain saw make short work of the limbs. We finish stacking all the debris at the street, hoping the highway department making a pickup. We have no way of knowing if this will happen. The sun is setting. Exit Steve. Exit Amanda, Daniel, and Elana.

It’s fully dark. I’m hungry but that’s the least of my problems. I go inside and start to make plans for getting the shower I really need by now. My options are limited. I can take a cold shower. I can take a cold bath. I can nuke a washcloth in the microwave and take a bird bath. I can go to a friend’s house for a hot shower. The final option is sounding really good.

There’s a knock at the door.

Enter Lloyd Callison. He’s grown a beard since I saw him last and at first I didn’t know him. He explains that he got my call, is going to be working at this regular job at Goodyear all day tomorrow (Saturday) and will take a look at my plumbing problem tonight. I tell him it’s under the house. He says no problem. I look up and say “Praise God.”

Exit Lloyd. Exit Liz. To the crawl space under the back porch. It is pitch dark now. We shimmy under the house with our two flashlights. He goes first.

In a manner of minutes Lloyd identifies a sag in the pvc pipe that leads to the hot water heater, and it’s obvious that a long strip is split from water puddling in the sag. It looks like a good ten feet will have to be replaced. I start to worry about how much this might cost, but he is also saying that this will be an easy fix. “I do need to go to the hardware store for some supplies,” he says. I look at him blankly. The one hardware store in Clinton has been closed since 5 this afternoon. “Isn’t it closed?” I ask lamely. “Not if you have the key,” he says. Exit Lloyd.

The hardware store is not across the street, but it’s only a block away, in the heart of downtown Clinton. About fifteen minutes pass. I close the door to the back porch and stand there. I am too dirty to go into the kitchen.

Enter Lloyd. he returns carrying two lengths of pipe, some cement, and a new fill valve for the toilet, which I also discovered was leaking. We inch back under the house and I have my flashlight again. I try to light the crawl space without shining him in the eyes. He tries to angle the new length of pipe in place. In a matter of minutes, he’s crawling out backwards, so I have to crawl out backwards too. On the way we are gathering up cement cans, extra pipe, and tools. He comes in and I write him a check for what he says I owe him and then some. He tells me to go to the hardware store tomorrow and pay for the materials. And to call him next week if I need anything. I tell him I doubt if it will be that long. Exit Lloyd.

I take off my hiking boots and leave them at the back door. In the kitchen I peel off another couple of layers, thinking that I will have to sweep the floor already from all the under-house dirt I’ve brought in. I go to the living room and look at the black television screen (it’s not hooked up) and eat some cereal and yogurt while I wait for the hot water heater to work its magic. I could read or play Mom’s piano to pass the time but finally I opt to just do nothing. After a while I test the water in the shower. It’s steaming, so hot I can barely stand it. Close curtain.

SF: Move Over, Anita Madden

2009-03-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

In the spring it’s great fun to be a Kentuckian...in San Francisco or anywhere. First there’s March Madness, with Kentucky basketball teams crawling through the brackets. If that’s not enough, just hang around for the first of May, when Kentucky Derby rolls around.

Last year, along with several other transplanted Kentuckians, we gave our first San Francisco Derby Party. It was an amazing success, beginning with 110 % turnout from our guest list (no neighs whatsoever and several crashers) and ending with calls for an encore next year.

Well, next year has arrived, and we’ve learned a few things from our past experience. Now (more than ever) The Derby will be Done Right in San Francisco. Here’s the checklist for a new and improved event.

1) No dress code. “Come Casual” was my first instinct but last year guests jumped ship on that one and came wearing hats and pearls. Sundresses. The women looked great, too. And then there was me, casual, jeans and sneakers. This year, I too will look-- oh so fine.

2) Mint juleps at the front door. This was the plan at Derby One and it can’t be improved upon. Our friend Jane contributed her silver cups and simple syrup. Sims and I had bourbon, sugar, and crushed ice. Every party—all year long—should start with mint juleps at the front door; it’s de rigueur, however you pronounce that word.

3) Got money? Last year we failed here. Time for the draw pot! Bring on the pick pot! Half our guests came with no cash whatsoever so we financed ALL the pots. It was a bailout plan like you’ve never seen….best not to repeat that in this economic climate.

4) Study up. With a guest list that includes non-Kentuckians, as well as Irish, Asian, and Russian friends, even “win, place, and show” came up as questions. Trifecta, Perfecta, Exacta, this was all Greek to some. So this year we’ll be prepared to field questions about geldings and standing at stud. We'll have our flip charts ready.

5) Lift every voice and sing. When the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home” resound through Churchill Downs, the group at home must rise and sing at the top of their lungs. No excuses, no Millie Vanillie. Not last year, not this year.

6) Abandon the calorie count. Cheese grits, country ham and beaten biscuits, corn pudding, bourbon pie. Chocolate. Bread pudding. Asparagus and strawberries. Last year we had ample samples of the Basic Southern Food Groups: sugar, lard, salt, and whiskey. This year, more of the same—with red roses on the table and the Bluegrass State’s best, if not healthiest, dishes all around.

So yes, Anita…with a little tweaking we too can do it right.

Entitlement

2009-03-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

Over on Fillmore Street preening
behind plate glass, the sepia-toned
photos in designer lofts,
a brides' bouquet.

They take on airs.

Callas are all created equal,
but thrive in stratified society.
Those in the park: slumdogs
bunched in drainage ditches
or sweet as white birds
in hills of tangled eucalyptus.

No Parking. Anywhere.

2009-03-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Never am I more homesick as when I try to find a parking place in San Francisco. A bad parking day in Clinton is when you can’t park at the door of Greg’s market and have to settle for a space closer to the ice machine. Or when a log truck is making a left at the stop light and the prime spot at the courthouse steps is blocked. There are no parking meters in Clinton, just happy, welcoming parking opportunities.

It’s not quite the same in SF. In the first six months of living in the city, I got four parking tickets. OK, maybe five. The first was for parking on the street in front of our house on a street-cleaning day. Our garage was full of boxes and the logical answer was to slide into the space in front of the house. I forgot to read–-or should we say–-interpret the “when you can park here” sign.
Parking tickets in San Francisco are $50.00 across the board, even if you run toward the Despised Meter Person with a fist full of quarters. So next time I needed to park on the street I remembered vividly: Thursday is street cleaning day on 21st Avenue. I had learned my lesson. It was a Friday, so I confidently pulled into a space across the street from our house.

When I came out, I was greeted by a slender white envelope neatly tucked under the windshield wiper. Street cleaning day on 21st is on Thursday on our side of the street, but Friday is Cleaning Morn on the other side.

We have a new rule of thumb on parking. If there is a space available, it is likely illegal to park there. A quarter buys you 12 minutes of parking time most places. If the parking meter is yellow, it’s a loading zone, not for you. If the meter is green, there is a 30 minute limit on parking. This means that no matter how many times you feed the meter, if your car stays parked in that space more than 30 minutes, you will probably be ticketed. The Meter Readers have their ways of knowing.

Our neighborhood is crawling with these little gendarmes. They drive golf-cart sized Meter Mobiles, and peer from their open windows in all directions, hoping to catch someone double parked in front of Viet Nam Cleaner, or with an empty meter at Royal Coffee Ground.

While taking Cleo on a dog-therapy visit to the VA Hospital on Clement I found a space walking distance from the hospital entrance. Magically there were no meters in sight. Returning from my stay, I was all aglow from Dog Based Ministry. This time I had parked in a permit-only space. There were no signs informing me of this, only a “white” mark on the curb. This stripe hadn’t been repainted in my lifetime, and furthermore it was obscured by moss and trash.

Our garage is at sidewalk level so there’s no parking in our own driveway unless you leave adequate space for a walker to pass between garage door and car. Everybody in our hood is aware of this San Francisco quirk, and we leave space accordingly. One morning each resident on our street who parked this way got a wake-up call in the form of a ticket. While we were sleeping the city changed the rules....no parking at all in driveways.

After so many tickets I confided to my husband that I was afraid, as a repeat offender, I might be arrested and hauled into traffic court. I might have to wear an orange suit, not my best color. Have no fear, he said. Bad parking means good things for QuakeVille. I was helping keep Fog City in the black. If that’s the case, then I am San Francisco's new best friend.

SF: American Spoken Here

2009-03-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

It's like shopping in an elevator. The Richmond Market is so tight, so crowded, there's no option but to squeeze through single file. Yellow and red peppers are heaped in crates on the sidewalk. Edge inside the garage-like door for apples and oranges, mangoes and grapes. You’ll be swept with the tide past pita bread and couscous. Make a u-turn at the back of the store to reach for sweet onions, potatoes, and broccoli. Once on your way, there's no turning back.

This is our neighborhood shopping hub. Walking distance from home and cheaper than the chain stores, the Richmond Market on Geary offers fresh but second-class vegetables: deformed bell peppers; apples that have a scuff or two. It's a happy market, full of B-Team produce and no marketing gimmicks whatsoever. Need a Japanese eggplant? Over there.

Shoppers reflect the diversity of our neighborhood. The swish-swish sound of Mandarin is muted by the more tonal Cantonese. A crying Chinese toddler may be comforted by a stranger who is speaking a Hindi dialect. The stock boys are all Hispanic and not available for any questions. Yet they are unflappable, going on with their squash arranging while being jostled by basket-carrying shoppers.

Russian is the language of choice at the check-out counter. As shoppers place turnips on the scale, the checkers chat with each other in the language of their childhood, same as in every store in America. Sometimes terms don't translate well, such as "traffic school" and this interjection gives the non-Russian shopper a window into just what was so interesting.

Most everybody speaks a second language, enthusiastically and badly, and understanding your own language spoken with a heavy accent is an art form all its own. I’ve had some rewarding “A-ha!” moments along the line, like when I heard a woman saying she was making sense of something by putting together the “poozle-pisses.” That one took me a minute.

I am learning to make my Southern-accented English intelligible, although it must be humorous to hear me speak even more slowly and (perhaps with more twang) than usual. I like it—the multilingual banana banter and cilantro chatter of the Richmond Market. American is spoken here.

SF: Fashionistas

2009-02-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

In Paris, women are hard-wired with fashion sense. Check out a girl on the street (of any age–it doesn’t matter in France) and you’ll see chic. Not the put-together look that was originated in an online catalogue, but a sexy, distinctive appearance that may be a careful mix of vintage and vogue. San Francisco is cosmopolitan too, but in this one arena, Fog City has let me down.

You’ll see exceptions in the financial district, but most San Francisco women dress as if their closets yield only one or two options. Uniform one is the yoga-pants ensemble, and it comes in only one color: black. Pair the black yoga pants with a short jacket, ill-fitting and possibly purchased at La Goodweel, and lace up a pair of sensible black shoes. The shades of black absolutely should not match, the yoga pants being slightly over-washed and faded against the more pristine jacket. On top of it all, notice a looping neck scarf...layered in a third shade of nothing.

Uniform two is the jeans uniform. Worn long and slightly battered (as if retrieved from the closet floor), the jeans uniform gives relief from the tedium of the yoga-pants ensemble and is positively showboat in comparison. Top with the same jacket (to give continuity throughout seasonal changes) and, yes, finish the look with the neutral-hued scarf, avoiding any references to the color wheel. In deep summer (that's 60 in San Francisco) polish off the outfit with flip-flops and a pair of sunglasses. Makeup is taboo. The San-Fran-Face is straight out of Ward B.

It’s easy to spot a tourist in San Francisco. She will be shivering from lack of layers. New white running shoes are a dead giveaway. An expensive tangerine-colored jacket paired with sharply pressed slacks from Brooks Brothers screams East of the Mississippi. Add an expensive, hand-crafted necklace (so large as to put one’s face in the shadows) and you be looking at wealthy , of-a-certain-age, and South of the Mason-Dixon line.

I’ve yielded to the uniform–but only so far. I’ve shocked San Franciscans by wearing my capri pants and huaraches in July. It’s a pairing that wears well under multi layered scarves and jackets. I have in fact shown up in church wearing colors, and occasionally jewelry. I know, I’m always one to push the rules.

I did leave my makeup trowel in Kentucky, but–even in San Francisco–I’ll never answer the phone without my mascara.

San Francisco: Not Quite

2009-02-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

Soaked by February rain

laundry sings

from a balcony on Cabrillo.

Dog whines on leash

and steps tap

syncopated rhythm

Look up

walk smart

leap sidewalk Mary

It's wet season in the Richmond

and we are

not. quite. gentrified.

San Francisco: December 31

2008-12-31T09:34:00.000-08:00

The last fog of the year
make lists
collect remnants
of Christmas meals, chop, bag
mince for an audience of one

Stir up tortilla soup,
cut cilantro, yellow squash,
vidalia and

at last

the piano
play (badly)
and know
enchantment lives
between
the sharps and flats.

San Francisco: The Basket Case

2008-06-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Today, an oppressive fog. Or smog, from the fires north and south. The Dow plunged. A barrel of oil reached a new high. When the mail came, our water bill was $833.99, which--yes--we're looking into. So I've retreated into the baskets. The Dale Chihuly baskets I saw at the De Young Museum yesterday. The magical baskets.

To describe the installation is like trying to recreate water or heat. Or like trying to explain intuition or a fleeting memory. There was darkness, there was light, transparent color, there was one floating form, and then another. I believe it was Sontag who said photography is a secret within a secret. I felt the same about the line of baskets, with their sister baskets, woven, incised, stacked, nested, cradled. They were like bubbles of a past I couldn't quite grasp. Like a word I could see but couldn't recall.

I remember my father coming back from the farm with an arrowhead in his hand. I remember standing by the little mound of earth in the woods and knowing that underneath there were pot shards and charred bits of some past lifestyle, but to scrape beyond the surface would somehow mar the moment as well as the past. This is how I felt when I saw the baskets, warped, cradled and stacked--they were a reflection of a reflection. I wanted to cry for a memory that I couldn't possess but could filter through my hands, just for an instant.

At home, I checked my email and learned that a tree had fallen on one of the rental houses in Kentucky. Cleo was crying for a walk in the park. There was dinner, the gym. But I was lost along the cradled baskets, in a color called 'tabac,' a woven line, following a link to nowhere and everywhere.

San Francisco: Conversation Overheard

2008-06-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

Photos of Jack Kerouak and Alan Ginsberg were looking on, and so was I.

The young man was a teenager, clearly from out of town, and his act of offense was to stroll into San Francisco’s most famous bookstore and ask for “a sports book -- any kind of sports book.”

The two clerks at the front desk paused, and in tones condescending, told the young man he wouldn’t find anything like that here. He persisted. "Just anything, a biography, sports photos, something I can take home to a friend."

The clerks shrugged and looked at each other, smirking. Try downstairs, one of them said. The young man turned from the front door and headed toward fiction. "That’s the upstairs dude, try the steps that go down." They were enjoying this.

To my relief, the young man walked out the door. But the clerks weren’t done with him. They replayed the scene, enjoying the encounter with this young midwesterner who didn’t have a clue. This was not a San Francisco moment.

For the last two weeks I’ve been punishing myself for not saying something, or doing something. "Excuse me," I’ve said. "Are you always so rude to your customers or just having a bad day?" Hey," I’ve injected-- "Try a little kindness." "You creeps,"I’ve blurted. "I’m never coming in here again."

Most of all I’ve wondered–what kept me from saying something?

SF: Rethinking Pigeons

2008-06-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

She was looking in my bathroom window and I knew at once this bird was serious. Bright yellow eyes glared from a new nest, built in the light well while I was in Kentucky during April. I looked back, and quickly recovered from longstanding pigeon-bias to enjoy a daily lesson the domestic life of he-bird and she-bird, a thoroughly modern couple who shared nesting responsibilities.

She-pigeon was small and soot-colored. He-pigeon loomed larger: the gray of a foggy San Francisco sky, an iridescent crest of green on his breast. She was fearless; I could crank open the window to the light well and send out food and water without disturbing her. He was another story. As soon as I appeared in the window there was a flutter of wings and I could hear him at the roof, gurgling, fussing, sputtering.

The nest they constructed was first a scant bundle of twigs swirled into the far corner of the space, but as days passed the pigeons added a substantial number of sticks and their home seemed more structurally sound. I was relieved. A week into the process I could see the tops of two white eggs.

Apparently pigeons have quite a following--positive and negative-- and you can learn almost anything about them on the web. Eighteen days is the gestation period for pigeon eggs but I knew in a week that one of the eggs was damaged...the shell dented and crushed but not fully broken.

Emotional involvement was not what I needed, but there I was. I recalled a 12-year-old version of myself, my brother's BB-gun in hand, taking a few wild shots at a pigeon roosting on the vacant Johnson house down the street. Miraculously I killed the thing, and what I recall beyond my immediate regret was the intense color of its blood. Later in college pot-throwing class I would be drawn to pigeon's blood as the most dramatic, most mysterious glaze color of all. I love it still.

More days passed, well beyond the eighteen day mark, and the couple continued to take turns sitting on the eggs. The female would usually be on the nest at night; the male would be there much of the day. They were no longer shy about the food I proffered and I refilled the dish about once a week. Other than glancing out the window at intervals I tried to keep my distance.

Still, I was hooked. I searched for my pigeons when I walked toward Speedway Meadow; I found myself looking backward after descending my front steps, wondering if one of the pigeon pair might be watching me as I left the house. The small iron pigeon in my kitchen window, a find at the Paris Flea Market, suddenly became more about a bird than about the City of Lights.

Three weeks passed and it was apparent that neither of the eggs would hatch. I felt like a physician who knows the truth about a stillborn child but doesn't want to acknowledge it. All three of us, the two pigeons and I, went on with the nest sitting and the nest watching for at least another week. We all pretended nothing was wrong.

Then one day there was a change. Both pigeons were strutting around the light well, agitated, on and off the nest. This was, apparently, the day they would end the vigil. I wondered if they could feel what I felt: all this long wait--for nothing. Ira tried to cheer me up, saying this was probably an unplanned event, that the pigeons were hugely relieved not to have to deal with squawking young ones, that they were anxious to get back to their normal pigeon-lives in the park or on the sidewalk at Geary. I couldn't laugh.

In the next days, the June light drew me to other windows. I reveled in the view of the bridge and tried to memorize the play of light on the Church of Holy Virgin. Still I sometimes looked out at the pile of twigs and once I was shocked to see the female back on the nest. But then she was gone.

A good week after the light-shaft tenants departed I noticed a shadow on the roof above the nest. The two pigeons were sitting there, still as statues, their heads both turned downward at an identical and awkward angle, peering at the what remained of the eggs. I expected them to fly away but they didn't move...not for the entire time I stood at the window.

Now a broken eggshell has blown into the main part of the light well--one of the eggs has decomposed and crushed. The last time I looked the other egg was still resting there, temporarily protected from the elements. And the pigeon couple, bright male and charcoal female, they've finally moved on. At least I guess they have.

PIGEON FOLLOW-UP

The pigeon couple returned to their nest in July. Both eggs hatched, and the fledgelings are almost ready to take flight. We've named them Rebecca and Walter.

Kentucky: By Design

2008-05-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

My mother and father would have appreciated Frost's poem, though I don't know that either ever read it. The sense of discovery. The three fragile players--spider, white heal-all, and moth. The bittersweet balance of nature, life and death.

Frost, ever brooding, can't stop with the mis-en-scene--He asks,

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.

When I recall the last days of both my parents, I find that Frost gives voice to my thoughts. Mine was a larger scene: the dissolution of my father's essence; my mother's final silence. Those days I tried to ask, "What brought us here? Could I have changed things? How can I make sense of this design?

Eventually my own creative forces reached in to scoop me out of the hole. With Phil's support and interest I decided to design a memorial to our parents.

It's for a window in the stairwell of the church where we grew up. This stained glass is isolated--it won't be closely juxtaposed with existing balcony windows. But we wanted the color and format to be compatible.

In my first drawings I tried to repeat the basic arch and grid pattern of original windows. These prototypes didn't exactly move me in color or style, but I kept going.

Our window would face the newly created prayer garden -- lighted and visible from the garden bench in twilight or early morning.

A wildflower theme was my first idea and I stuck with that. Mom and Dad delighted in their own garden and transplanted dozens of fragile flowers from Hailwell to a shady spot in our back yard. As children, Phil and I were often steered to the wildflower garden to see the first sprouts of the season. Later as young parents we did the same with Kent and Matt,Ben, Mason, and Emma.

So the Dutchman’s Breeches, trillium, bloodroot, ferns, violets...each heralded a new season both in the farm woods and in our own back yard. As my first ideas surfaced, it seemed that the pale golds, blue greens, and lavenders would play nicely against colors of the existing glass.

Phil suggested adding an Indigo Bunting to the design. Transplanting and tending the wildflower garden from Hailwell was mostly Mom’s domain. But on jaunts to the farm it was always Dad’s job to point out the glittering flight of the bluebirds, now so rarely seen.

The first clean draft of the window positioned the birds at top quarters and meant this design would not be crafted with four identical quarters, but as two halves in mirror images. This suited me fine until I begin experimenting with color. Too much bluebird. Not enough pastel and woods color. Top heavy to the max. I went back to the drawing board.

The next design placed trilliums at each corner, golden crocus and Jack in the Pulpit on the sides. Foliage was in yellow greens and blue greens.

A tulip magnolia–-reference to Mom’s beloved Hickman County Museum–-found a spot at top and bottom center, with slender Dutchman’s Breeches providing a sparkle of white. Indigo Bunting, edited in scale and position, was center-stage.

At this point a draft went to Wallis Stained Glass in Murray, with color bars from the original windows placed at the sides for reference.

Jack Wallis Stained Glass is a few miles outside Murray, Kentucky, a cluster of rectangular shops in a hollow off Butterworth Road. It's quiet. Neither Ira nor I knew what to expect, but preliminary phone calls and emails made me feel comfortable about this stage of the project.

After ritual greetings and a warm-up conversation, Jeremy Speight and I took a look at my drawing.

There's a lot of pausing and looking. We begin the ritual of pulling out glass samples and checking them against the colors I've proposed.

Just hauling out large glass pieces from their upright positions in storage bins was a delicate operation.

Jeremy and Patty Cornelius placed large monoliths of glass in the window, so we could consider the texture, transparency, and impact of color against color.

There was a lot of talk about greens. Yellow-greens, blue-greens, green-greens. How color plays against color for maximum effect.

Patty produced a delicate yellow-gold for the center crocus. We talk about cutting the glass so veins and texture will starburst from a center point. My confidence was established...the designers and glass-cutters here seemed to appreciate the subtlety of each component of our wildflower window.

We slid a swirly rose-colored glass from the bin and checked it against the

light. Easy decision--the pink magnolia blossom would be cut from this piece. Indigo blue is another issues. We looked at several samples and finally settled on one.

I was amazed that we found a piece of glass that echoes the borders of the original windows. It was a swirling pattern of purples and blues...and included some earthy browns. To my eye it was dramatic and distinctive. And should be used sparingly in a pastel window.

The black-and-white design was exactly like I drew it, with small improvements suggested by Patty and Jeremy to facilitate the flow and to stabilize the design.

The blue-greens and yellow-greens had a subtle difference, and as promised, the individual cuts brought out the beauty of the grain of the glass.

There's an abundance of soft white in the window and the band of dark multicolor makes a nice contrast. This is also the same glass that's used in the other balcony windows--a swirl of blue, purple, amber.

So far I was happy with the details. The dutchman's breeches flow into the pink tulip magnolia. Lines that flare from the blossoms were an addition that made the design more graceful than my original sketch.

It's all about the light. So when the leaded window was propped against the window, the colors sprang to life.
It was a mix of sweet and earthy colors, geometric and organic shapes. Jeremy put more gold in the window than I had in my initial sketches and I'm not sure if I liked it when I saw a photograph of the finished window. Nevertheless I ok'd it during a conversation we had and crossed my fingers that it would looks ok installed.

Finally, months later, the window is installed. I'm happy with the craftsmanship. The cuts are smooth--even the difficult curves--and no modern shortcuts were used in the leading process. The colors are distinctive--earthy golds --not my choice but they keep the pastels from being cloying, the greens and purples resonate in ways I'd hoped. If I were starting over I would do some things differently, both in the window and in the larger scheme of things. How it ultimately worked out was all right...I'm at peace with it. At some point I realized the design was out of my hands.

San Francisco: The Cardboard Truck

2007-10-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

It's part of the Geary Street drama, the cardboard recyclers.

Accordion on wheels
the cardboard truck
turns on Anza and moves up 21st

Flying fingers of cardboard man
and brittle brown wife weave dry stacks
in horizontal layers–their mesa
grows skyward as seamless day ascends

and light slants --

and soft fog bellows from Ocean Beach.
The load groans toward Geary,
hovers at the crosswalk,

bent woman, piercings, baby backpack
a short processional moves by

he watches, flint-faced, then leans,
strikes blindly toward the seat beside him
and
celebrates sunset
by lighting up.

San Francisco: At Stern Grove

2007-10-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

We made camp
high
among redwood trees
Puccini and pasta
on the slope

while below
golden hatless heads, quilts,
a hundred paper fans
moving

like butterfly wings.

San Francisco: How to Taste Edamame

2007-10-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

How to Taste Edamame

Erase that Kentucky field
sunshot August morning
clay cracking, shaded by hearty green just

tackle the here and now

and holding by tail
pop salted pod into mouth
draw through teeth
as you would the artichoke then

close eyes and let the pearls delight you
breathe deeply hear first foghorns
held at Bay

then go back.

South Columbus
at margin of the long field
reaching toward September twist the stem
and
roll dirt-colored husk with thumb it

splits
you taste the little pebbles. If they give way just
toss the pod--

not ready for harvest yet.

San Francisco: View from Cabrillo

2007-10-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

ink and watercolor on silk

Pressing the Buttons of the Universe

2007-08-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Sims is the seasoned writer in this home, and his comment on Northern Kentucky's Creation Museum compels me to step back and let him speak.

As a native Kentuckian, any news about the Creation Museum fills me with a bizarre combination of amusement, embarrassment and contempt. Of course the Creation Museum isn't about science. It's about a personal longing for certainty and a societal escape from fear. It's about people using religion as a talisman, for protection. The Creation Museum is a palladium. It's a monument that safeguards a substantial part of contemporary American culture. It provides comfort for millions who want to believe in a personal God pressing the buttons of the universe. The idea of religion as something internal is less compelling to these people. The awesome sweep of evolution, the legacy of trial and error and adaptation worked out over eons, doesn't begin to satisfy their longing.

I don't think there are simple answers to the phenomenon that the Creation Museum represents. I try to respond with the empathetic recognition that most people on some level are searching for meaning, and that this search works out in many different ways, some of which appear sophisticated and others that appear laughable, and that all of this is subject to cultural perspectives and prejudices, and that perhaps a kind of intellectual evolution is also at work.

More than two thousand years ago, the Roman statesman Pompey became curious about the Jewish god he had heard so much about. Rome was a city of a thousand gods, of course, the more the merrier. Like most Romans, Pompey was impressed by the antiquity of Judaism, by the fact that it had been around for so long. On the other hand, as great organizers, monotheism made no sense to the Romans. How could one god take care of the whole world? To get maximum efficiency, gods needed to specialize. Passing through Jerusalem, Pompey decided to check it out for himself. He strode into the temple, right into the inner sactum, which as a non-Jew wasn't supposed to enter. Pompey expected to find a huge, garish idol, but the room was empty except for some scrolls. That blew his Roman mind. The beliefs of this tiny minority in a dusty corner of the empire seemed absurd.

Today monotheism seems less strange. So maybe we should give the Creation Museum a few thousand years. Come back when it's a ruin studied by scholars from unknown places who speak unborn languages. Maybe then truth will provide more comfort than myth, or at least the proportion of relative comfort will have shifted a bit. Maybe then science won't be the enemy.

Drawings: from the "Hours" series

No, It's a Whippet

2007-07-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

When we leave San Francisco, Cleo stays there. This is one of the few kinks in our otherwise manageable lifestyle.

We've thought of bringing her on board disguised as an ugly baby. We have, in fact, debated every way to get her to Kentucky...other than stashing her in the cargo hold of our plane. Our lives aren't quite right without her.

Whippets are indeed the best kept secrets of the dog world. When I decided to get a dog, I began with a dog search engine. Sims and I entered all the significant adjectives: medium-sized, short-haired, quiet, gentle. No yappy dogs need apply. The answer came back the same each time: Whippet, Whippet, Whippet. I couldn't remember what a whippet looked like. Sims vaguely remembered the lanky hounds from reading the encyclopedia as a child.

Though her moods are mercurial, she's never disappointed us. We start the morning before Cleo does, particularly during San Francisco's foggy season. At daybreak she's usually sleeping soundly between us, having migrated there when we're in our deepest sleep. Later she'll lope to her chair and curl there like a brindle doughnut. With no padding whatsoever, she's always hunting a warm spot.

Heat-seeking, yes. A heat-seeking missile. The sound of leash-janglings transform her. In a flash she's at the door, ready for a sprint. As she loops in circles at Marx Meadow we continually explain: No, she's a whippet. this is our mantra as again and again passers by comment on her greyhound-ness. Whippets, in fact, were bred from runty greyhounds. Their lines stretch back to Egypt, and in Wales they were considered the poor man's greyhound--chasing rabbits for food and competing in spontaneous speed-matches.

When she's off-leash at Ocean Beach, she becomes Miss Congeniality. She flirts with small dogs, big dogs and occasionally meany dogs. When black labs bound into the surf she follows, the fabric of her dog-limbs translucent and kite-like. My heart stopped once when she racead away from me and sprinted alongside two horse-drawn sulkies trotting at low tide. It was like a scene from The Iliad, our graceful sight hound bounding beside the chariot racers. I was terrified for her, but transfixed by the timelessness of these graceful moving forms backlit by the sun.

When I'm in Kentucky I miss her amber eyes, too light to qualify for breed standard; I miss her occasional (and intentional) vocalizations--too speechlike to be considered barks. Most of all I miss her gentle spirit and ethereal nature--she enters the room as quietly as a shaft of light.

You Say Felicia

2007-07-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

When I least expect it, my southern accent leaps forth with energetic twangs, drawls, and foiled pronunciations. The conversations and speech patterns I hear in Kentucky keep me rooted in my past; those in San Francisco amuse and delight me in new ways. On the Fulton/Ocean Beach bus, the entire front section raised eyebrows at this exchange between a male bus driver and a female passenger--apparently an old friend.

Driver: Did you know I'm gettin' married?!

Friend: No! Who to?

Driver: Felicia!

Friend: Policeman? A San Francisco Policeman??!

Driver: NO, FeLEEsha!

Friend: Felicia WHO?

Driver: I don't know. She short.

Kentucky: night sounds

2007-07-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'm learning to love the two-note foghorns in San Francisco, but they can't compare with the night sounds in the South. An antidote to the daytime humidity, catydids charm the night air and lull me into a sound sleep.

Watercolor and ink: flying things

Back in Kentucky

2007-07-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've spent this afternoon hunting for our roofer, whose name is Pep.

In cleaning Mom's house we discovered a major leak on the back porch, so I'm on a mission to find him. I've been to the hardware store and the senior citizens center, but Pep's not either place.

Mom usually tracked down his truck and put a note under the windshield wiper. She did this in a matter-of-fact manner, as if everyone located their roofer this way.

I found several helpful locals at the pool room--finally one who described, in great detail, where Pep lives: on highway 51, across from where Piper's Drive-In used to be, behind the house in another house, beside the brown flatbed truck.

I found the house, the house annex, the truck, and I left a note under the windshield wiper.

Kentucky: From Mom's Memorial Service

2007-07-12T18:36:00.000-07:00

Through clouds of cotton
Checkered green fields speak of home
But my ship jets on.

Virginia Honchell Jewell, February 2006

Mom would have enjoyed writing her own obituary. She would have plunged in, fingers flying across the keyboard. She would have researched, confirmed, redrafted. She would have spell-checked with a vengeance.

The traffic pattern in our house flowed from Mom’s chair to the dictionary. The family joked that we couldn’t get through a meal without Mom leaving the table to confer with the Unabridged. As a child I was her proofreader--chanting features, weddings, and obits back to her before they were mailed or phoned in to The Gazette, The Paducah Sun, The Memphis Commercial Appeal or The Cairo Evening Citizen.

Mom’s childhood was spent in the coal fields of West Virginia and East Kentucky . Her father and Burt Combs were cousins and it was one of her few points of pride that the whole clan understood the value of education.

Barlow, in Ballard County, was home to Mom’s maternal grandparents. When she was twelve, the family moved there – Crystal and Ben, Frank, Virginia, and baby Evelyn. Mom was a spelling bee champ and found her niche in a high school history class taught by Ira Simmons, Sr. She left her journalism studies at Murray State College for a year--drafted by Harry Lee Waterfield as interim editor of The Gazette in Clinton.

This uncharacteristic decision led Mom to the man she married, Ramer Jewell Jr. It also led to her other great love–the history of her adopted county. Her books, Lick Skillet and The Cat in the Pillowslip, are collections drawn from a lifetime of writing. They document the architecture, archeology, oral history and revised , most of all, the social history of the county. Without editorializing, her message was clear: This place and its people have value.

In establishing the Hickman County Museum, she created a place for the things the people of Hickman County leave behind. With over 5500 individually described and numbered items, the museum is a living, evolving monument to the history of the county. Just before her death she wrote what she called “The Playlet.” It was a short historical drama about citizens of Columbus who were banished to Canada during the Civil War. As usual, Mom multi-tasked – she was writer and researcher, cast consultant and costume assistant, elocution coach and cheerleader. When asked how the play went, she ignored the fact that she was the author. Instead she talked about the team of actors. “They were wonderful,” she said. “They were all just wonderful.”

She loved puns and poetry. She enjoyed good conversation and the sound of voices raised in song. One of the few things that “got her goat” was when her email was down and she couldn’t write notes to family and friends. Hearing "Fiddle!" from the computer desk meant something was seriously wrong. Meetings of her poetry group were bright spots on the calendar. For a half-century, she played the organ at church. Her walks through town, down Beeler Hill to the cemetery and back, were punctuated by waves and chats. “I used to just walk,” she said, “but now I like to stop and talk.” There were always old friends and new families. She and her dear friend Frances Warren formed an unofficial bread-baking welcoming committee for every Methodist minister who moved to town..

Talk and poetry; the woods blooming with wildflowers; picnics with family at Hailwell Farm; surprised laughter and new words to look up—for Mom, there was always something to learn, and life was never complete, never finished, always a draft.”

Last winter when she visited me in San Francisco we made a project of writing haiku together. The spare, controlled stanzas seemed to expand with her philosophy: an abiding sense of the spiritual, a reverence for nature, a knowledge that every moment is precious. During the last day of that visit we exchanged our verses at a table overlooking the breakers of Ocean Beach. We edited and polished our writings, surprised at our own insights. Mom was in her element as she counted syllables and debated the correctness of each word. “Let’s remember this day, “ she said.

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