HEARTBEATS

Jizo, protector of lost children

To continue my unplanned quest to read books with Library, Book, or Bookshop in the title, I've found two books based in Japan, both are gentle, somewhat magical realism stories. They both would be considered light reading, but they also ask questions about human existence that left me thinking about the ideas they expressed.

 I mentioned the first book in an earlier post, The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura, which reveals the story of a bookshop that only appears in a park during cherry blossom season. The people who wander into the bookshop are helped by the owner and her cat to find a book that can help them resolve regrets left when people they were close to pass away.  The story made me think of our times during cherry blossom season when we walked through a park by the small stone statues of Jizo, protector of children who died, their red scarves covering their necks and the cherry blossom leaves slowly falling to seem like snow around them.

Heartbeat Library by Laura Imai Messina is another quiet story about tender relationships that develop because of grief and sorrow. The main character is cleaning out his mother's house after her death and finds answers to his own life in the house and in the unexpected companionship with a young neighborhood boy. Eventually they travel together to Teshima, a Japanese island that is home to the Heartbeat Library, an actual place designed by French artist, Christian Boltanski. Visitors can record their own heartbeats and listen to the hearbeats of others, a creative way to think of how we all are similar.

This juxataposition of France and Japan reminded me of our time living overseas in both countries. When we lived in Japan, we discovered that the Japanese we knew were enthralled by Louis Vuitton and Chanel. Both Japan and France had similar customs of buying a few high-end products, rather than throwaway items, and using them for years. When we were in France, every department store seemed to be celebrating Japanese culture, with furniture and clothing by Japanese designers on display. The two cultures also have similar imaginative and tender views of matters of the heart.

Once I read these two books, I picked up my book journals that I had been keeping since 1991, with notes on each book I have read. I wanted to see how many of the books were either about libraries or bookshops. I discovered a peculiar practice in my first journal. I had started at the back of the book and each page moved forward through the years. The journal itself was called the Book Lovers Journal. Inside were illustrations and photos of bookmaking, cartoons about readers, photos of bookstores and the insides of libraries, authors and their handwriting, and printing machines. In the middle of the journal I found John Dunning's The Bookman's Wake, a mystery with a central character who was a book seller, someone important in the chain between book production and readers.

Reading books to me gives me a window into someone else's thinking and of their values. A novel about a building filled with all those writers' voices seem to be a place where the heartbeats of those writers are stored.

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Check out the Hearbeat Library on Tehama Island, Japan:

https://benesse-artsite.jp/en/art/boltanski.html

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My list of books with Library, Bookshop, or Book in the Title:

Janet Charles, The Paris Library

Lisa Wingate, The Book of Lost Friends

Evie Woods, The Story Collector

Barbara Davis, Echo of Old Books

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of AJ Fiery

Jackie Fraser, The Bookshop of Second Chances,

Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

Susan Orleans, The Library Book

Kim  M. Richardson, The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek

Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

Robin Sloan,  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Freya Simpson, The Last Chance Library

Elise Hooper, The Library of Lost Dollhouses

Shirley Abbott, The Bookmaker's Daughter

Lewis Busbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book

David Crystal, A Little Book of Language

Christopher Beha, The Whole Five Feet

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

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Window View in June 2026

HIDDEN BY THE FOG

The entrance to Mesa Refuge, the former home of the artist, Sam Francis,
and inspirational retreat for many writers

After an afternoon at a writers workshop at Mesa Refuge near Pt. Reyes Station, I met back up with Bill, who had spent the time taking photos of the area. We wandered around the main street of the small town. To get to Pt. Reyes from San Francisco is a journey from a busy city through suburban life to the quiet country with rolling hills, narrow roadways shared with cyclists, cattle ranches, redwood forests lining the road, and at the end, the Pt. Reyes National Seashore where the land meets the ocean. Both Pt. Reyes and Olema, an even smaller town nearby, depend on tourists and were hit hard during and after the Pandemic. They are just starting to recover with new restaurants opening and inns refreshed.

"The Lighthouse at Pt. Reyes National Seashore" by Bill Slavin

Like our recent trip to Bodega Bay, just north of Pt. Reyes, we traveled mid-week and learned that many places are open for only the four-day long weekend at this point. On Tuesday, the first night we were in Pt. Reyes, the only "open" restaurant was closed for a wedding party. We were lucky to find the Due West at the Olema Inn, with good food made from local produce, fresh fish, and homemade butter. Butter used to be the main product from the area in the late 1800s and early 20th century and was shipped by sea to San Francisco. Spreading the salty butter on the homemade sourdough made us wonder what those times would have been like.

"Pierce Ranch Barn" by Bill Slavin

The next morning, we followed the wedding party to the Side Street Kitchen and had a lovely breakfast of French toast, butter, and strawberries on their patio. We then set out along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, turning off at Pierce Point Road, to search for the tule elk that populate the outer reaches of the national seashore park at Tomales Point.

"Outbuilding at Pierce Ranch" by Bill Slavin

The fog had settled along the coast, and we didn't see any elk even when we came to end of the road at Pierce Ranch. We are used to foggy weather at this time of year along with the wind that makes temperatures feel even colder. We stopped while we both looked for good photographs among the old barns on the ranch and watched as the fog began to lift. As we were driving back, we spotted a lone female elk, high on a ridge, silhouetted by the soft foggy light. As we drove further and the fog began to rise, a herd of elk resting in the shallows of the hills came into view. Some had full sets of antlers. We stopped along the side of the road, opened our windows, and listened to the quiet. The herd had heard our car and turned in our direction but didn't move. As we drove on, more and more became visible. We felt lucky to have seen these elusive animals and not to have disturbed them either.

"Tule Elk" by Bill Slavin

As we headed home, our trip had been a loop starting from San Francisco to Lucas Valley Road to Highway 1 around to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, which brought us back into the sunshine and heat at Fairfax, where we stopped at the Fairfax Coffee Roastery, in business since 1979. The place is covered with Art Nouveau-style vines made of wood, and lettering and murals similar to posters designed by Alphonse Mucha, all a reminder of designs popular in the 1970s. With a friendly staff helping us, we ordered two lattes to enjoy while we sat and watched people roam around the busy streets of Fairfax, another hidden gem in the Bay Area.

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https://pointreyes.org/point-reyes-station-marin-county-california/ 

Restaurants in Pt. Reyes Station and Olema worth a visit:

https://stationhousecafe.com 

https://olemahouse.com/due-west-restaurant/ 

https://sidestreet-prs.com

Visit:

Cowgirl Creamery: https://cowgirlcreamery.com/pages/our-mission

Toby's Feed Barn:  https://tobysfeedbarn.com

and, of course, Pt. Reyes Books:  https://ptreyesbooks.com

The writers workshop at Mesa Refuge was led by Elizabeth Fishel and Susan Page Tillett:

https://www.elizabethfishel.com

Mesa Refuge offers residences for writers:

https://mesarefuge.org

Plan your visit to Pt. Reyes National Seashore:

https://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/index.htm

If you drive to Bodega Bay, stop in at Ren Brown Collection Gallery, focusing on modern Japanese printmakers:

https://renbrown.com

Coffee in Fairfax at The Coffee Roasters, 4 Bolinas Rd., Fairfax

FIVE POINTS OF VIEW

 I grabbed a seat at Arches, a local art store, for their afternoon class with Natalie Cole to make marks with sumi-e ink. We spent the afternoon spraying Canson Bristol Vellum first with water; and then with a fine pipette, we dropped and scrawled sumi-e ink across the paper.

I love how ink spreads when it comes in contact with water. It balloons out into blooms of various shades of grey. We let the paper dry so that we could add strokes of the black ink across the grey areas we had made before. We used various tools: a silicone brush, a Japanese style bristle brush, stamping tools, and resists such as crayons and oil pastels. 

Mark-making tools

The result was a batch of papers with lines, blotches, washes, and various marks across the pages. I picked up the artist's corners that Cole provided and moved them across the paper until I found a pleasing composition within the haphazard splatters. I cut out the shapes and adhered one or a combination to a page in a 60-sheet, mixed media 9" X 9" sketchbook. 

I used flexible artist's corners to find a composition within a larger page.

Four small designs from one page of marks
made with Art Graf water soluble chalk

When we all finished, we had the beginnings of an artbook that could be filled with many small pieces of art to display. Using the sketchbook as a repository for these small pieces of art is a brilliant idea. I have a collection of scraps from many other projects that had languished because I hadn't decided how to use them. With the pieces adhered to the sketchbook pages, I could turn them into small art pieces which I could display within a book.

At the end of the day, we gathered around each book and discovered how differently each of us responded to the supplies. I had covered most of my pages with large areas of grey-to-black marks and found small compositions inside them. Another person drew three-inch brush strokes in a series across the page with none of the strokes touching each other. Another person used watercolor as a background instead of grey and introduced small amounts of sumi-e strokes. Someone else drew long thin shapes over a mottled background. The dark images looked like groups of trees or people.

In all the similar workshops I've attended, I haven't seen that much diversity of expression. Usually, the workshops are longer so we all have time to walk around to see what others are doing, but during this short class we didn't have time to look at other people's pages and I thought we ended up being more creative because of that. A surprise to me since I've often thought that creativity is often enhanced by the exchange of ideas where a simple idea can be enhanced by collaboration or suggestions producing something greater than the original. In this workshop I felt I was looking at the core of each person's creativity.

Four small compositions put together to make a design.
The red dot unifies the composition

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Check out Arches Art Supplies and support a local business:

https://shop.archsupplies.com

TWO STORIES INTERTWINED

The beginnings of summer remind me of my family's trips halfway across the country. Most of my extended family on my dad's side lived in Minnesota or close-by states. We would take a car trip every few years across the Mohave Desert (at night so we could all survive the desert heat). Our car had a burlap bag attached to the bumper in case the radiator overheated, while inside we played car games. We drove to Las Vegas, then to St. George, Provo, through the Rockies to Salt Lake City, to Cheyenne, Rapid City, and Pierre, South Dakota, where we stopped to visit cousins and stayed at an early B&B. We went on to Sioux Falls, and over the Plains and finally, to Willmar, in the middle of Minnesota, in the middle of corn fields and lakes, loons, and north of the home of the Lower Lakota Community.

We traveled across the West's bloody history as we visited the Black Hills and Fort Bridger with the knowledge that much of the land we ventured on had been traversed for centuries by Dakota and other native tribes long before European settlers arrived. The land around Willmar had been the home of the Lakota tribe, who rose up in rebellion against white settlers (we could read an historic marker about the event near the town of Spicer), and who were eventually defeated with more than 300 men rounded up, charged, and 38 eventually hanged altogether after Lincoln denied them clemency, one of many dreadful moments in the migration expansion across our country.

When we reached Willmar, we stayed at Grandma Heimdahl's rambling house next to the railroad line and listened late at night to the haunting whistles of the trains arriving at the station and roundhouse in the center of town. Grandma's house had a basement filled full of treasures for young kids to explore and furniture in her parlor covered with doilies she crafted. A widow, Grandma offered room and board to single men who lived like ghosts while we stayed with her. We could hear them climb down the stairs and leave in the morning but never met them.

My sister Elle and I slept in the dining room next to grandma's kitchen. In the morning, Grandma prepared the first of many meals for us. Grandma, a no-nonsense woman who raised seven children, spent her time crocheting, attending church, and playing cards with her friends. She wore her long hair in a braid around her head, sipped elderberry wine in the evening, with her cheeks rosy from the wine. She was stout, wore oxford shoes, and made lefsa, a Norwegian treat shaped like a tortilla but made from mashed potatoes and covered with butter and either jam or sugar.

My dad's family arrived in Minnesota from Norway after the wars across the plains. My grandmother's mother died in childbirth. Her aunts and uncles close by helped to raise her. My grandfather came with his brother, who continued to Washington. Their family name, Olson, was so common in the United States that they changed it to Heimdahl, the guardian of the rainbow in Norse mythology. They left us with a name that most people mispronounced until the popular Marvel movies about Thor.

We visited cousins and aunts and uncles on their farms or at their cabins by a lake, listening to elders tell family stories and shared time with cousins swimming, fishing, and boating on lakes large enough to have waves. We would come inside only because mosquito evening time arrived. The mosquitoes and moths batted against the cabin porch lights, hoping one of us would be foolish enough to go outside.

One summer we drove to Bemidji in Northern Minnesota and saw the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues that brought tourists to the town. We stood at the origin of the Mississippi, which runs through Minnesota and sometimes spreads its broad waters in floods across the plains. Near the spot are Native Tribes' burial mounds. We trespassed around them and thought of what their lives would have been like before and after the Whites arrived to push them off of their lands.

My family immersed itself in the stories of the Native Tribes of the region. We walked the same ground where people before us had lived and thrived. We read about Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Red Cloud of the Oglala and Hunkpapa Dakota and Lakota. We wandered over the hills where Sitting Bull defeated Custer. We heard stories of the fierceness of Crazy Horse and his horrible treatment once he was arrested. We read about Red Cloud's victory over the U.S. Army, which closed the Bozeman Trail. We knew that these tribes had been forced onto reservations. When Red Cloud went to Washington, DC, to sign the treaty, he saw the vast number of people who lived there. He realized that his group would never drive out the settlers. He came home to be a peacemaker and activist for his tribe.

My family and everyone else who lives in the United States can enjoy a good life on land that was taken from earlier peoples. We live between the American dream of aspiration and the bitter truths of our history. We still need to have a conversation about our relationships with people who don't fit our concept of an American. During the Biden administration, the idea of national parks managed by indegenous people gained ground under the first Native American NPS Director, Charles F. Sams III. Four parks, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Glacier Bay National Park, Grand Portage National Monument, and the Big Cypress National Preserve, are now co-managed by the federal government and tribal nations. Under Trump, this progress is in danger with no confirmed head of the NPS and large numbers of employees fired. As an individual, I ask myself what I can do to support the idea of indegenous people co-managing the national parks. Small steps can grow bigger by writing my reps in Congress, donating to specific Native Tribe organizations, and being an ally as one of my cousins did during the Keystone XL Pipeline dispute or do what so many brave Minnesotans did this year in protest of ICE actions against their neighbors. 

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Former NPS Director Charles F. Sams III:

https://columbiainsight.org/chuck-sams-on-the-biggest-tragedy-of-trumps-gutting-of-national-park-service/ 

Dr. Deborah Reese, a Nambe Pueblo,writes a blog about indegenous people in literature:

https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com

I've found these non-profits that focus on supporting Native Tribes:

https://nativephilanthropy.org/blog/2020/08/21/6-indigenous-educational-organizations-you-should-follow

REFRESH

The restored marshlands around Bodega Bay

 "I miss the pubs," our server exclaimed with his Cockney-accented English, "I miss all the conversations you can have in a pub."

People have asked us if we miss anything since our move to San Francisco from an East Bay suburb. While we are in the City, we are surprised to find we don't. We are close enough to keep in touch with old friends, and the City offers us so many new opportunities to explore. But like our time living in Paris, we need to refresh and get away from city life for a while. We used to take the Eurostar to London so that we could surround ourselves with English. Though the Parisians spoke English as well as natives and often with what we call an English accent, our attempts at French made communications sometimes a funny and/or frustrating exchange.

We took a few days in Bodega Bay, north of the City. Bodega Bay lays along the coastline and in June is often foggy like so many beach communities. Bodega Bay, though famous from the movie, "The Birds," is still a quiet place compared to other California beach towns. On the deck off of our hotel room, we sat and heard the mooing of cattle in the fields around the corner. In front of us, separating us from the rest of the low-slung hotel buildings was a slope filled with Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans), those plants with large cone-shaped spikes of small flowers that bloom bluish purple all spring. Some of the flower stocks near us reached above our heads with cones of flowers three of four feet in length. We saw bumblebees darting around them and heard the calls of finches, sparrows, and black birds within the silvery-green shrubs and a nearby cedar tree. Off in the distance, we could see the bay which has been a home to a small fleet of fishermen and crabbers for many years. We noticed at our dinner the difference in freshness and taste of the petrale sole and halibut caught nearby, but that local offering is changing as local fish and crab supplies have dwindled by overfishing. Many of the boats now provide whale-watching tours instead. After another dinner at a different restaurant, we sat around the fire pit and looked out over the restored marshlands to the ocean. We could barely see the waves break against the sand in the distance. We could close our eyes and enjoy the peaceful moment.

Pride of Madeira at the Inn of the Tides

The next morning we ate breakfast at a restaurant perched on a wharf. We watched fledgling swallows huddled on a metal section of the wharf beneath our window. The adult swallows swooped in and out from under the wharf. The bay was sleek and quiet as a lake.

Fledgling swallows looking out over Bodega Bay

We found while visiting Bodega Bay what we miss: birds in abundance, a firepit to sit around, gardens, and, best of all, quiet.

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Photos by Bill Slavin

Good spots in Bodega Bay:

Inn at the Tides:   https://www.innatthetides.com

Lodge at Bodega Bay:   https://www.lodgeatbodegabay.com/

Ren Brown Gallery, specializes in Japanese printmakers and ceramists. Open Wednesday to Sunday. Ask to see Ren Brown's Japanese gardens:   https://renbrown.com/about/

We missed the highly rated Terrapin Creek restaurant and several other places because they are closed early in the week. Plan ahead!

The Russian River Estuary where Harbor Seals tend their young

LET GO AND TRY AGAIN

"Buvver Fishing" by Martha Slavin

 An instructor once told me not to paint people I know because my hidden feelings about the person would arise as I painted. I don't paint portraits often, but I have followed that advice and have selected photos of strangers to use as models. I like to paint people, but I don't try to make the look exactly like the photo.

The Pacific Art League in Palo Alto offered a challenge this summer to paint something about my own memories. I was intrigued enough to look through old photos of myself growing up.

I found a photo of my sister and me as young children on the steps of the house we lived in until I was five years old. We spent time in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers, watching the chickens scramble around their pen, or running in a circle playing Ring Around a Rosie with some of my sister's friends. I decided to ignore the old warning of painting someone I know and tried to draw this photo.

I think of myself as good at drawing, but I don't draw children very often. I drew my sister without much trouble, but when it came to me, I got stuck. I drew the outside of the head too large and the features way too small. I realized that I kept thinking that the figure should be child-sized,  so my hand kept making them small in comparison to the space on the paper. I just couldn't get the proportions right.

Once I started painting, I came up with other problems. When I painted the skin tone, I used my usual facial formula of Cadmium Red Light mixed with Raw Siena. I found the tint was too weighty for a toddler, so I added a touch of Permanent Red to make it pinker. That didn't work at all, but nothing I did with my brush or Viva paper towel got me back to a light enough tone.

I decided to start over and drew just the faces and shoulders of the two figures. Again, I had the same problem with proportion. My mind kept thinking of the two as small and so the features shrank within the ovals I had drawn for the heads.

I decided to try again. I drew only one of the figures. She turned out to look like one of those children in a horror movie who you would find hiding in a closet. I decided I needed help, so I looked online for watercolor artists whose focus is painting young children. Going through the examples, I was reminded of the grid system that many use to help them draw.

Lightly penciled grid system

I have avoided the grid system all my life because I can still hear my art school and college instructors imploring us to draw a figure freehand so that we would learn to intrinsically understand the figure. Why I hung on to this belief is a bit of a puzzle. Why didn't I use helpful techniques when I needed them? My ego saying I can draw without these kinds of aids? Belief that drawing without crutches creates a better understanding of that form? A little bit of both, I think. This week, finally, I gave in. It was time for me to try something different. I drew a light grid, dividing the paper into sixteen sections. It worked. In my mind, I knew how to draw the figure to make it look believable, but the grid helped me get the proportions right.

I never know when I am going to learn a new life lesson.

Unfinished painting with work needed on skin tone

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A long overdue holiday, Juneteenth. 

Kevin Levin writes: "Juneteenth is a federal holiday now. It belongs to the country, which I understand to mean that it belongs to all of us...because the story of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom is the central drama of this nation's history."

We haven't reckoned with what Juneteenth represents to this day. Watching the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Library reminded me of the forward-looking, kind, inclusive people we can be.

 

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Want some good news? Two websites I read give us all an uplift:

Americans of Conscience:    https://americansofconscience.com/checklist/

Reasons to be Cheerful:    https://reasonstobecheerful.world

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From Jalen Brunson:  "You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, 

but you gotta go out there and do something about it."

Masculine or Human

 

"All in the Eye of the Beholder" by M. Slavin

Have you seen the groups of young college-aged men who have been removing their shirts at sporting events lately? They make me laugh with a little bit of cringe. Such a typical, silly stunt for groups of men of that age. By showing off their pecks in this way, are they imitating Pete Hegseth and Putin who may have set the example? In this period of excessive masculinity, I wonder what it really means to be male in a period when many of our gains are being retracted.

I have noticed more and more women who are being fired or removed from political and military positions. In political races, women are targeted for their "bad behavior" (Katie Porter) that slips by or is hardly criticized for male candidates (Graham Platner). Women are losing much of what they have gained in the last fifty years. Why?

What does it mean to be masculine? I think of two brief instances that I observed when I saw men acting at their most natural.

"Leap" by M. Slavin

Riding on the Metro in Paris we came to a station somewhere in the north end where a parade filled the streets. Men in long white caftans, long beards, and turbans were beating drums with such power that they seemed to be shaking the earth around them. I felt like I had been transported to Africa. Their faces reached for the sun; they chanted with confidence. They were in their glory.

I grew up in California and know that many immigrants from South of the Border have lived near me working menial jobs, creating an unnatural inequality between us and the lasting impression of subservience. On a weekend at the beach, I walked on the sand just as a group of Latinos came dashing up from the surf, riding horses with authority and with a sense of security - the vaqueros of another era and place, with no deference to others. They were in command of their day.

In both instances, in Paris and on the California beach, I saw a group of men filled with joy, strong in their actions, subservient to no one.

Roger Tory Peterson, naturalist

Lately, I have been watching several Korean drama series. Their idea of masculinity as presented in film vary from ours. The men seem more in tune to their emotions. The films show how they care about each other. They are not afraid to cry. Yet, they can be strong and decisive as well as humble when they need to be, a more nuanced way to be male in films that too many American males see as feminine. But, they almost always have a scene which shows their bared pecks. 

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This weekend honor our founding thinkers, who brought us the Constitution and our ability to interpret and change its meaning: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King.

And don't forget American women thinkers and change-agents: Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Franklin, Sally Ride, Ophra Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. 

And each one of us who values what democracy offers.