SUN-FILLED ROOMS

The sun shone over the weekend, which made many people exclaim, "Spring is here!" Wrapped in a scarf, a puffy vest, and a hooded sweater, I felt a moment of bittersweetness. First, because I like the cooler weather where I can bundle up and stay warm against the elements. (Maybe I wouldn't miss the cold if I lived in a different climate.) The sun felt good, even to me, as we walked towards the food trucks on our last day in our apartment. We have given our notice and moved the possessions we lived with for a year and a half to our new place with a different view of the city.

Since we moved to San Francisco, I have taken a photo out of one window every day as soon as I climbed out of bed. I wanted to continue this practice but considered a different time of day in our new setting. I tried six in the evening for a few days, but we were often out of the condo at that hour. I tried several other times during the day. I thought a 24-hour cycle might be interesting. I realized that I would never get up at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning to take a photo. Sleep is too precious right now. 

Different times of the day from our kitchen window

We have not established normal routines in the flurry of our move. We laugh to think we have spent almost two years finding a place and settling in. We originally hoped for a smaller, single-story home with a small yard in the suburbs. We thought six weeks would allow us to find a new home and move in. Instead, we spent two years reflecting on what we need and want in a home. That idea changed once we moved to San Francisco and realized all the city has to offer. We are grateful that we can make these kinds of choices.

We don't have a table yet to eat meals on, and our living area is still covered with boxes of stuff that we are unpacking, sorting, and/or giving away. Every morning as we walk towards the kitchen we feel like the boxes have duplicated themselves overnight. We declare small victories when one small corner is cleared and only filled with a purposeful choice.

We would rather be out adventuring, taking pictures, painting or writing to our representatives, or standing on a corner with a sign of protest. We are heartened to see the crowds lining roadways and gathering at capitol buildings. We will join them on Saturday. Right now, we have put aside our adventurous, patriotic spirits to complete our personal task of making this space a livable one. If anyone has seen the small manual that explains how to program our furnace thermostat, let me know. It is here somewhere. We may not need it in our sun-filled rooms in a city where the temperature averages between 40 and 73 degrees. 

I look out the window by my desk and see the soft light that clouds create and watch the branches of the Japanese maples outside. Their leaves are just beginning to unfurl. In a few days, the leaves will fill the trees with the special Spring green that I remember from our time in Japan. Spring is here!

Some Japanese maples with leaves already flourishing

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President Dwight Eisenhower, who also served as president of Columbia University, said, ""The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government."

CYCLICAL LIVES

I picked up my copy of the book, A Living Room of Our Own, while searching for stories written by a friend who recently passed away. The book is an anthology of stories written by the Wednesday and Friday Writers groups led by Elizabeth Fishel. I have belonged to Wednesday Writers since 1993. Until the pandemic, the group met every Wednesday during the school year at her home to write memoir pieces. When I joined, I was the mother of a young son. Being in the group has been a way to reconcile my life as a mother and my life as a woman with dreams of my own. From Elizabeth's house, I could see the young mother who lived next door, and I fantasized about what she was feeling and thinking while she tended to her children. I wrote of the moments when young mothers can feel overwhelmed by the caretaking of small children. But I also came to realize that women have cyclical lives and that motherhood and dreams are not mutually exclusive.

THROUGH THE WINDOW

Our writing class sits in Elizabeth's living room in her Arts and Crafts style home in Rockridge. About a dozen women have met together for the last three years to write about our lives. We are all ages, but we share common experiences as mothers and women trying to find our place in the world. Our group sits intently reading each other's writing or discussing pertinent ideas regarding our shared pieces. Next door to Elizabeth is a dark brown shingled house. Elizabeth says, "There's Tera with her two babies," and we turn to see a young woman busy with her children through an open kitchen window. The mother is intent as she feeds, diapers, dresses, and talks to them.

Elizabeth has asked us to write about her neighborhood. I looked out the window and wondered what I could write. Today is the first day of spring and much outside is changing. The plum trees that line the street burst with blooms. Each house has a small front yard with many flowers ready to appear. The yard next door wraps around the front, up the driveway, and cuts to the back. It is filled with new plantings with seeds sprouting in straight rows their shoots carefully protected with copper caps to ward off the snails lurking in every California yard. A new drip system has been laid to sustain all the plants, and the dirt is dart and crumbly, ready for plants to surge forth.

I look again at the window and see the woman standing there with her baby. She reminds me of the many times I walked, cradled, and hugged my son when he was that age. We look at each other and I smile slightly and nod in recognition of the time she is spending. But then I go back to my writing about Elizabeth's neighborhood as the morning passes us outside.

TERA IMAGINED

Tera had two babies right in a row. She had been part of the more free-flowing world, teaching painting classes, taking long treks around the world on her own, and getting involved in the political games that circle Berkeley like mad yellow jackets. Now her life was different. She was a full-time mother -- an often isolating existence of diapers, baby food, naps, and play groups. She hadn't painted in months. When she went out, she met other mothers at the park and other places where babies were welcomed.

Her next-door neighbor led writers' groups for women. They showed up in the neighborhood every Wednesday morning, briskly walking to the grey stucco house that squatted so closely to her own. She often saw the women stop to talk with one another before they went inside. Their faces lit up in animation, their arms filled with papers and notebooks. How she sometimes longed for the carefree, yet purposeful days before her babies came.

Tera looked down at her clothing. She had been wearing the same things for the last three days. Colin, her oldest, had a cold and she had been up all night, comforting and rocking him. Tera stood in the kitchen, leaned against the sink, and quickly ate a graham cracker before she walked to a chair so that Salina, her youngest, could nurse. She looked through the small kitchen window to her neighbor's and saw the women writers sitting in a circle in the living room. Their heads were bent over, busy writing. When one woman finished, she looked up expectantly as though what she had written had given her a natural high. Then the woman caught a glance of Tera in the window looking at her. Their eyes locked in recognition of their many roles as women. The writer was the first to turn away.

Tera walked to the overstuffed chair with Salina in her arms. She lifted her blouse and Salina went for her breast, and Tera began to float away in her mind to that place where nursing mothers go.

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Wednesday & Friday Writers now meet on Zoom

We all have stories to tell. Julie Cameron's book, The Artist Way, and Natalie Goldberg's books on writing are excellent sources to help you get started writing. 

Or join a writers' group. Check out Elizabeth Fishel's website here:

https://www.elizabethfishel.com

Though A Living Room of Our Own is no longer available,
these two anthologies are available on Amazon.
All proceeds are donated
 to two breast cancer centers in the Bay Area.

 

A BILLION BIRDS

"Crow Stories" by Martha C. Slavin

Our views are so different from the lush greenery of our former suburban neighborhood. As I look out the window, half of the view is the roof of the building below with all of its machinery securely positioned and some of it steaming. Occasionally workers congregate around a mechanism, adjust pieces, and walk the ramp that leads to the exit. Crows like to cling to the edges of the roof and preen themselves. In a strong wind, they seem to be holding on to the roof edge for dear life. I often see them and the seagulls flying by at my nose level. They land on the deck above us, but mostly they glide in free flight. Once in a while, a hummingbird hovers at the window looking at me as intently as I watch it. Those moments with another being remind me of our need for empathy in this tumultuous world.

The view from our windows will never see the flocks of billions of birds that used to fill the skies. Bird populations have been decimated in the last centuries because of hunting, pollution, habitat destruction, and our lack of empathy for other living beings. I have been appalled at the news of migratory birds being killed when they fly into buildings at night. They can't see the glass and hit at full-flight force. The birds get confused by the glass and the artificial lights and thousands hit the glass and fall down to the ground to die. The American Bird Conservancy estimates that in the United States alone upwards of a billion birds are killed this way each year. Yes, a billion. It is hard to visualize that many birds.The deaths are not just by flying into skyscrapers. Single-family homes create traps for birds too. We can protect birds by adhering film with random patterns or dots onto the house windows, by keeping window coverings closed at night, and by turning off lights between 11 pm and 6 am. Making these attempts can be a way to develop empathy and to understand the effect our actions have on others.

Canadian geese arrive at Mission Creek while migrating in the Spring

Watching the birds in the morning reminds me of taking John Muir Laws' drawing classes at the Lafayette Library with two good friends. Laws offered free classes about drawing animals. The three of us would spread our papers, pencils, waterbrushes, and colored pencils on the table so we could share our supplies. We watched as Laws demonstrated drawing techniques.

Drawing the class members as well as a hummingbird

I am good at drawing people in motion. I know how bones and muscles move in a human body so I can make a quick gesture drawing. In the class, we attempted drawing the animals that moved in the video that Laws projected on the screen. I discovered, that even though animals have similar bones and muscle structures, doing a gesture drawing of one was not so easy. I needed to fully understand what was underneath the skin and spend time observing how each animal moved. For instance, have you ever watched a cheetah sneak up on its prey? Their shoulders, unlike humans, rise above their lowered heads and move like two wheels connected together. At home, we watch PBS's Nature series, which has given me more time to study animals in motion. Eventually, if I practice enough, I will master their movements too.

Trying to capture how a bird flies

"Cherish What You Cannot See" Martha C. Slavin

This post is written in memory of Joan Stevenson, an artist, writer, and dear friend.

Want to know what is flying over you at night? Check out this migration tool:

https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/live-migration-maps/?_gl=1*1fx49mi*_gcl_au*MjAxMzkwNzY2OS4xNzQzMDMxODk2*_ga*MTA1NzgyMjQ2LjE3NDMwMzE4OTY.*_ga_QR4NVXZ8BM*MTc0MzAzMTg5Ni4xLjEuMTc0MzAzMTkwOS40Ny4wLjA.

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MARCH 2025 View from my window

Janet Reno. In her farewell speech, she said of democracy, “It is a fragile institution. The rule of law is fragile. The rule of law is based on people, and democracy is based on people.” 

HIGHLIGHTS

Paris is an easy place to be a tourist, especially in Spring, oh, and in Autumn, even Winter, Summer, eh. The citizens care about their city enough that the monuments we all know so well, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and Sacre Coeur, haven't been surrounded by skyscrapers. After the Tour Montparnasse construction, the citizens rose up in protest and the Parisian council instituted a height restriction of 12 stories for all buildings within the city limits. The skyscrapers were limited to La Defense on the other side of the Seine. Those limits remained until 2010 and have recently been reinstated after the approval of the Tour Triangle at the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles, which is rising to 42 stories.

Many of the older buildings in Paris are made from locally sourced limestone and can become dark with pollution. Buildings are required to be cleaned every ten years to preserve the aesthetics of the City of Lights. The buildings are draped with scaffolding and coverings to contain the dust. The cleaning takes several months to complete. We were very thankful that our apartment building, made from the soft-white limestone, had been cleaned before we moved in.

View from the window of our Paris apartment in the 16th Arrondissement

When we lived in Paris, our son and I would take an afternoon and complete one of the Paris Highlights tour spots we had devised. We rode the Ferris Wheel on the Place de la Concorde, took the elevators at LaSamarataine department store or the Tour Montparnasse for the city view, rode the bus to Montmartre to Sacre Coeur, or climbed into the elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The tower stands at 1083 feet and is still the tallest structure in the heart of Paris. Standing on the Eiffel Tower's glass floor on the first floor, we looked down between our shoes to see a different view of the sidewalk we usually walked. We got back on the elevator and rose to the next floor to look at the changing perspective at the higher levels.

Our local PBS station recently showed a documentary about the Eiffel Tower construction. Once the tower was complete after much controversy and opposition, Parisians crowded to the top to marvel at the city below. The Eiffel Tower was then the tallest structure in the world so the view must have been a wonder for them.

Flower Market near the Republique Stalingrad bus stop

All these memories flashed back at me as Bill(husband) and I walked the sixth-floor hallway to a lab at UCSF Parnassus for some tests he needed. We happened to come on a perfect sunny Spring day. As we entered the lobby, we were stunned to discover a hidden, 180-degree view of San Francisco out of the windows. Like those first Parisians at the Eiffel Tower, we stared in wonder. Before us was an unexpected diorama starting at the Sunset District with its straight main street leading to the Pacific Ocean, moving over Golden Gate Park to the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge sticking out from the greenery, over the various neighborhoods of the City, and to the high-rises in downtown and ending just beyond Salesforce Tower at another green hill. Our only puzzle was why all the chairs in the lobby faced away from the view.

Sunset District to the Pacific Ocean

Golden Gate Park & deYoung Museum

Golden Gate Bridge

University of San Francisco

Downtown San Francisco

San Francisco is often compared to Paris. It is a beautiful city and its citizens have tried to keep it that way. San Francisco is well-known for its system of arcane building codes. Not every decision has been good. We lost the old Fillmore District, which used to be called the Harlem of the West with all its links to Black music and history. It has been supplemented by the Fillmore, a busy neighborhood with small businesses lining the streets, similar to Jackson Square and Chestnut Street, but the Black community has been pushed out. For the most part, like Parisians, SFers want a say in keeping the city's character. When a tower of apartments was recently proposed for the Sunset District, a residential area of 2 to 4-story buildings, citizens rose up in protest. Green spaces within the city are now required of any new large building so we have sculptures and small parklets that dot the downtown. Best of all, we now have a series of parks that run along the Embarcadero from the Golden Gate to Bayview, along the San Francisco Bay Trail.

The view from our 8th floor window 

While I was waiting for Bill to finish, I took out my sketchbook and tried to draw the diorama in front of me. Some artists can create drawings of cities with each building and each street delineated. I remembered as I drew that I am not one of them. I decided to draw outlines and took photos instead.

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https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/why-paris-has-imposed-a-ban-on-skyscrapers-12748392.html 

Thanks, Christy, for some of the photos of Paris.

SIGNS OF SPRING

Tulip Tree in Bloom by Martha Slavin

A single bird, possibly a sparrow, wakes me up each morning singing its heart out and letting any female nearby know he's ready to build a nest. I think of the bush on the other side of the building that has been full of bird songs for the last month or so. As we walk by the bush, we can't see any of the birds though the leaves tremble occasionally. Their songs are lusty and make us smile. We look through the iron fence next to the bush and watch the dogs bark, race and chase each other around the dog park.

Later, standing at our large bathroom window, I can see two ducks paddling across Mission Creek. Their wake makes perfect Vs, reminding me of Winston Churchill holding up his fingers in a V for Victory during WWII, and later in the 1970s, the hippies raising their hands in a similar gesture for peace. I can hear the faint call of a Canadian goose disturbed by another's presence.

Across the street on weekends, the children's park is filled with the cacophony of babies, toddlers, and their families. We can't help but smile as a toddler splashes in a rain puddle or climbs up to the top of a rope ladder structure with a steadying hand from its dad.

On our residential street, we can hear these simple sounds and enjoy quiet moments watching life go by. Beyond our street is the continuous roar of a city. The rumble of the freeways, sounding like rushing rivers or waves breaking, continues into the night. The streetcars and emergency vehicles add clangs and sirens to the mix. 

While visiting a friend near the Carquinez Straits in the East Bay recently, I realized how much noise I absorb on a daily basis. In her backyard, I heard the birds chattering and that was all. The silence was profound.

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The work of one of my favorite artists, Corita Kent, a nun whose works became internationally well-known in the 1960s, still is relevant today. She was a teacher and printmaker and she used her artistic talents to speak out against poverty, racism, and injustice. We are in another tumultuous period in our history where it matters what we do and whether we want to be on the right or wrong side of history. I received an email recently from the Corita Center whose headline read: GIVE A DAMN. 

Don't you?

Check out the Corita Center website:

https://www.corita.org

Read Scott Ostler's piece in the SF Chronicle about Jackie Robinson and this administration's efforts to eliminate references to race/ethnicity/diversity:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/ostler/article/cancel-jackie-robinson-making-history-team-trump-20229893.php

Robert Reich's column today sent a shiver through my heart. Read it to see one of the possibilities which explain what is happening in Washington DC right now.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-159486715

After that, you will feel uplifted when you read this essay by Anand Giridharadas:

https://the.ink/p/the-opposite-of-fascism?fbclid=IwY2xjawJJdRRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHZNPNc0Uh7vnuf8Gf-qOrxUxM4hWcSQLfRTeZ8FHzg2ZNOsEe9mZ94Nz4w_aem_3YPpZnSCtHu7lRhR_vu-Hg

NOT EVERYTHING IS AS IT SEEMS

What looked like one of those cardboard boxes that we all use for packing books sits near some concrete benches in a small park at UCSF. When I saw the box on the ground, I thought someone had left it out and forgotten to take it with them. When I got closer to the box, I realized it wasn't cardboard but a metal replica of that common object. Next to it was one of those ubiquitous plastic chairs found at any big box store, except this one was bronze. The maker had a sense of ironic humor creating something permanent from something that we think of as a throwaway. These objects represent one of the main purposes of art: to question what you see in front of you.

Some recent sculptures express the dilemmas of our history. "Hollow" by James Shefik presents a Confederate commander as one of those toys that allows you to push a button on the bottom of its stand to make the figure fall over. When you release the button, the figure pops up again. The sculpture stood in the middle of a large exhibit of work by Bay Area artists and startled me with its clever depiction of history and its cycles. The sculpture reminded me that we are a complicated country. We are the neighbors who will help out when needed and are the raging insurrectionists breaking windows and harming people hired to protect all of us. "Hollow" shows us that ideas and convictions flourish and diminish in the cycles of history.

We attend performances at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, which since 2016, has interspersed musicals, Shakespeare, and puppetry with plays that contain timely subjects. Early in 2016 Berkeley Rep began their season with a new production of Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here, written in 1935, about a fictional political figure (based on Huey Long, governor of Louisiana at the time) who becomes president. The play shows the effect that his fascist policies have on America. John Moffit turned the novel into a play and it is a not-so-subtle rendering of the potential of a dictator like Hitler and the importance of being informed, verifying information, and voting.

Since that year, Berkeley Rep continues to remind us of parts of our history that many people are trying to bury with book bans and eliminating uncomfortable parts of our history from public schools. Last season, we saw Mother Road by Octavio Solis, which chronicles the journey of a group who migrate from California to Oklahoma, the reverse of the migration depicted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. The play shows the effects of the earlier migration on various ethnic groups who were displaced by the desperate, mostly White, migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl. Another play, Far Country, by Lloyd Suh concerns the plight of Asian immigrants from the early 1920s who faced the consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which kept them on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay for 18 or more.

This past week the New York Times published a list of words that they found had been removed from various Federal agencies' documents and websites. The list is long and exclusionary, eliminating such words as women, bias, Black, Native American, equal opportunity, and hundreds more. As "Hollow" depicts, ideas and policies, even the most divisive, never disappear.

Well worth the time to scroll through James Shefik's website for his sculptures here:

https://jamesshefik.com/portfolio-james-shefik-1.html

Check out the article in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html?searchResultPosition=2 

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John Lewis: "We may all have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now."

STAYING TRUE

For Ukraine

Each Friday as I press the link to publish Postcards in the Air, I am reminded of the day in 2014 when I first published a post every Friday. When I started writing, I mostly wrote to understand myself and was surprised when I accumulated followers. My point in writing was to show how my choices in creating art affected the rest of my life and to understand that do-overs can be learning experiences. I hoped to show that not everything I do worked well, but there is something to be gained from working through problems. (And also something to learn from starting fresh.) I usually avoid political questions since I know other writers who express their opinions far better than I do. Sometimes, my rage creeps in when a national or worldwide event can't be ignored. Yet, I tell myself each week that my Friday blog is a place for people to rest, pause from stress, and take a moment to think of something outside of their own lives. Today I am celebrating my eleventh year of writing and I hope I have succeeded in my endeavors.

I am also a student of history and have gained much from the Federal declarations of history and heritage months for the diverse groups in our country. Though recognition of these groups began before 1976, Gerald Ford was the first to declare February as Black History Month. The list for History Months grew from there to include Women's History, Gay Pride, Asian Pacific and Hispanic-Latino Heritage, Disability Awareness Months, and more. Because of these designated months, I discovered people and events I had never read about, but who should be honored for their contributions to make our country a better place.

Without these months, would we know about the achievements of Shirley Chisholm, Jane Bolin, Bessie Colman, Gordan Parks, or Jackie Robinson? Would we know the names of Native Americans such as poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, veteran Dan Akee, and astronaut John Herrington? Would we begin to let the Holocaust recede into history? Would Cesar Chavez, Casilda Luna, or Judy Baca be recognized for their achievements? Would we know LBGTQ Brenda Howard, Alvin Ailey, Jane Addams, or Edith Windsor? There is a space in our history books for the stories of diverse groups including Arab Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans. Are we so small in our thinking that only the actions of White men are considered to be worth remembering?

This week I plan to read about some of these people and events. I think reading about their struggles and achievements will remind me of what is possible in the United States and will restore my hope in our country. Join me.

I hope you will take the time to look through these stories on the various websites here. Please note that you will find people who belong on several of these lists. Isn't that what America is all about?

Check out this website for more information about both history and heritage months:

https://www.diversitycentral.com/calendar/heritagemonthguide.php

February is Black History Month as designated by the White House on January 31, 2025:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/national-black-history-month-2025/

Check out history programs at PBS:

https://www.pbs.org/shows/?search=&genre=history&source=all-sources&sortBy=popular

Check out these Hispanic women and their stories:

https://latino.si.edu/25-latinas-you-should-know

List of famous modern Native Americans:

https://www.countryliving.com/life/inspirational-stories/g45710442/famous-native-americans/

Check out the stories about AAPI:

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/aapiheritage/people.htm

A list of Jewish Americans and their stories:

https://www.ajc.org/news/amazing-jewish-americans

Check out this story about the disability rights movement:

https://set-works.com/7-women-who-shaped-the-disability-rights-movement/

Check out the stories of Arab Americans here:

https://www.facinghistory.org/ideas-week/honoring-arab-american-heritage-stories-changemakers