TIME TRAVELS

Window View July 2025

A hundred years. A century of life. My grandparents and parents were alive in 1925. They had already witnessed the spreading of electricity, indoor plumbing, the telephone, and motorcars, as they were called at that time. One hundred years ago, the world had survived the First World War and the 1918 influenza. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Franz Kafka's The Trial, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby were all published in 1925. All three books remain on Literature reading lists, and their themes are as pertinent today as they were when they were first published. Fitzgerald memorialized the idea of how great wealth and prestige can corrupt and decay morals and social values. The Trial showed us that an individual can become powerless against an overreaching form of government. Mrs. Dalloway's themes revolve around the passage of time and the effects of WWI, especially on class structure and privacy.  These ideas are so familiar today.

One hundred years ago, the Jazz Age and Paris were filled with creative people such as Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Picasso, Man Ray, and Josephine Baker. New fashion design created freedom of movement for women. Coco Chanel promoted the flapper dress with its tube-like shape and shortened hemlines, and hair cut into a "Bob." The right to vote was extended to women in the United States. Jazz became the music that represented these forms of rebellion against norms.

Fify-one years ago, the Beatles arrived at JFK Airport after their song, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," went to #1 on USA charts and helped to create another music rebellion. While traveling around the US, Paul McCartney took photos of all the people who came out to see the Beatles. A large collection of his photos, along with several videos from TV appearances, can be seen this summer at San Francisco's deYoung Museum. Amidst all the frenzy that surrounded the group, McCartney stepped back and took pictures of crowds waiting on roofs, on streets, and at airports. We wondered if anyone in recent years has created such a fan frenzy, and thought of Taylor Swift, who has created a devoted fan base through her music.

The Beatles' music outlasted the group. Their early music is catchy and easy to sing along with, and it played as the background to my own early adulthood. Along with groups like the Doors and the Righteous Brothers, Beatles' music rang out at every college dance. We still hear their music in public places, and children have grown up listening to them, too. Yesterday, as I walked through a shopping mall, I was surprised to hear "Help" over the speakers.

A friend, who is organizing music shows at the Winters Opera House, invited us to a performance by the Sun Kings, a Beatles tribute band that has been playing together for 25 years. Winters is off the main highways, between the Bay Area and Sacramento. Bill and I had never been in Winters before, so we were curious why we had missed it. As we headed east, we drove across the Bay Bridge to the Carquinez Straits to Highway 80, a road we traveled often in earlier decades to go skiing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At that time, Highway 80 was a country road that cut through fields of produce, and almond and walnut groves. Fruit stands dotted the highway, and an occasional way station, such as the Nut Tree, offered a place to stop on our way to the Sierras. Now, until we reached the Nut Tree, shopping malls lined the road, though large swathes of farmland can still be seen behind the buildings.

After we passed the Nut Tree, we took Highway 505 to Winters, a small town where everyone seems to know each other. 2025 is Winters' sesquicentennial year (150) and the town is still flourishing. The main street is only a couple of blocks long and lined with old, stately brick buildings, attesting to the town's prosperity in the previous century as a hub for railroads and agriculture. The railroad no longer stops in Winters, but agriculture is still a big business in the area, and several large corporations near Winters provide other jobs. Three lively restaurants in the center of town occupy some of the brick buildings: the Preserve, whose owner sponsors the music shows, the Buckhorn Steakhouse, and the Putah Creek Cafe, which has a line out the door on weekends for breakfast. The Hotel Winters has been beautifully refurbished and is across an alleyway from the Opera House, where the Sun Kings performed.

That evening, the hall quickly filled with ticket-holders, most of whom had been around in 1964 when the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show during their first tour of the U.S. We heard a few screams when the band started playing, "I Want to Hold Your Hand."  During the first half of the performance, we listened to the merry, light-hearted music that the Beatles played in their early days. The whole room moved with the music, singing along to every word just as we all did in 1964. After the intermission, the Sun Kings moved on to play the Beatles' more sophisticated, intricate music and ended with John Lennon's ballad, "Imagine." Those songs from the earliest to the later years moved us through a decade of turbulence as we witnessed the Vietnam War and Watergate. The later songs reminded us of the effect of those events on the world, how that music helped to carry us through those turbulent times, and how much we have changed since then. After a week, I am still humming "Can't Buy Me Love."

All Americans' Day

Check out Litcharts for more information about these three great books:

https://www.litcharts.com

or 1920s Fashion:

https://www.wardrobeshop.com/blogs/flapper-era/how-jazz-influenced-fashion-in-the-1920s#:~:text=The%20Age%20of%20Jazz%20in%20Fashion&text=.The%201920s%20saw%20some%20massive%20changes%20taking%20place%20in%20the%20fashion%20industry&text=Some%20significant%20changes%20that%20became%20permanent%20in,make%20moving%20around%20and%20driving%20cars%20easy

Winters as a place to visit:

Stay at the Hotel Winters:

https://www.hotelwinters.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local&utm_campaign=gmb_listing

Try these local restaurants:

https://www.preservewinters.com     

https://www.buckhornsteakhouse.com   

https://www.putahcreekcafe.com  

Interested in music? Check out the Winterslive concert list at 

https://www.preservewinters.com/live   

 

CONNECTIONS

A walk through a garden gate

Last Saturday, Bill and I attended a live podcast produced by Village Connect, a local non-profit with a mission to support families, schools, and individuals by developing cultural connections. The event was staged in a local church, which had been renovated with white walls everywhere, while still retaining the original stained glass windows that brought colored light into the room. It was a beautiful space.

I've spent many a Sunday throughout my life sitting in a church. I am not a religious person anymore, having given up Christianity when the extreme right took over back in the late 70s. I had to step back and examine my own beliefs when I repeatedly heard words and ideas that I didn't believe in. That doesn't mean that I have lost my love of churches. I find walking into one gives me a moment of stillness and quiet that I don't experience in a museum or other monumental place.

Angel in an old church in Norway

We sat in comfortable padded chairs positioned so that each person had plenty of room to walk down an aisle or place their possessions around them. The back of each chair had two pockets: one for donations and one for a pamphlet about the church, but no Bibles or hymns. Sitting, while we listened to the podcast interviews, I thought of other seating in other churches in my life. As a child, my family attended a local Methodist church, which met in a small traditional Gothic-style chapel with stained glass windows lining the stone walls. The church was dark and lit by candles. The pews were wooden and hard. A pew-length pocket contained a hymnal, a Bible, and envelopes to put in donations when the brass plate came down the aisle. The rows of pews were close together, too close for people to easily pass by others, so an usher guided latecomers to the outside of the row, and the seated group would move inward. We would be touching each other as we sat. I liked leafing through the hymnals to read when each hymn had been written and by whom. I tried to stay as still as I could so I could continue to sit with my parents instead of going to Sunday school.

The church grew in the 60s and built a modern version with enormous stained glass windows over the altar and side walls, flooding the space with light. The pews remained the same, straight-backed hardwood, except they now had cushions. Bill and I were later married in the old chapel because I loved the traditional space and the organ music that enveloped the room.

As an adult, I attended a local church with a large congregation for a while, as well as various other churches when we lived in Tokyo and Paris. All of those churches had the same hard pews, and I imagined that those seats were made deliberately hard by the builders to develop discipline and humility. We visited churches such as Chartres Cathedral, where we arrived just as the organist sat down to practice, and the sound reverberated throughout the cathedral. We followed the purification rituals when we visited Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, dipping the wooden cup offered into the clear, running water, pouring the water onto our hands, and rinsing our mouths before we turned to walk through the torii gate. We also removed our shoes before we entered the temple. In each place, we found wonder, beauty, and quiet spaces created by the builders.

A torii gate leading to a temple in Japan

As I moved away from the church, I still found myself walking into churches in different locations, such as Carmel, where The Church of the Wayfarer's garden features plants and trees referenced in the Bible, and inside a dark, quiet space much like the church of my childhood.

In the last few months, I have attended memorial services for friends at churches that have made changes in the way people are seated. Padded cushions cover the pews of one church. Another had taken the pews out entirely and substituted individual chairs. Last Saturday, comfortable chairs filled the sanctuary. Instead of family and friends sharing the same tight, uncomfortable spaces, I now found a separate, comfortable place for each person. We weren't touching each other, nor did we need to make room for someone else. I wondered if the removal of the pews for individual seats reflected our own view of who we are and our place in this changing world.

Find out about the work Village Connect does here:

https://www.village-connect.org

Origins of the religious right:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/ 

Before you go to Japan, check out this site about purification rituals at Japanese temples and shrines:

https://japantravel.navitime.com/en/area/jp/guide/NTJhowto0142-en/#:~:text=Before%20entering%20the%20shrine%20through,basin%2C%20ready%20to%20be%20used.

FRIENDS AROUND A TABLE

Bread: so you never know hunger

Salt: so that life may always have flavor

Sugar: so that your life shall always be sweet

A typical Scandinavian housewarming gift includes these three simple ingredients. Recently, a friend with Scandinavian roots presented me with these items. Her gift made me think about the importance of our friendship and how those same ingredients are universal and underappreciated until they are not available. The Scandinavians have it right in providing basic food as a gift.

This week, a group of longtime friends gathered together for lunch on a California day of brilliant sunshine and not too hot weather. We sat outside in the arbor-covered patio and talked about our families, our activities, and our commitments to righting wrongs. We all belong to AAUW, a women's organization founded in 1880 by Marion Talbot, who was a champion of women's education and empowerment when college education was widely considered detrimental to women's health. Talbot began the long AAUW tradition of supporting women's equality and rights. Our group and the women of today benefited from the actions of women before us who advocated for our rights. First, all of the group are college graduates. We have been teachers, mothers, and community leaders.

We have learned to support each other in whatever way we each choose to express our opinions. Some of us attended the protest marches in various towns near us on June 14. Some of us write, email, and call our representatives about issues that are important to us. We have also learned ways to find quiet moments in our daily lives, whether by spending time with family, traveling to new places, taking long walks, or making art. We have learned the importance of community in providing companionship and support for the issues that matter to us. We have learned that community provides the bread, salt, and sugar of our lives.

There are 3 words in this piece.
Can you find how many times each word is repeated?

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Mencius:

"Friendship is one mind in two bodies."

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Check out AAUW here: https://www.aauw.org  AAUW welcomes men as members.

If you are in San Francisco this summer, visit the Kalligraphia exhibit
near the Rare Book Room in the Main Library. 

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If you were born in 1975 and are a woman, you have enjoyed equal rights for 50 years. Read Jesse Piper's post about her generation and the rights that women are losing now:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-166244658

NATURE RULES

After taking Kristen Doty's colored pencil workshop,
I have been experimenting with the medium,
which I haven't used in a long time.

With a bang, the wind slammed the bedroom window shut. We live in a windy city, and San Francisco, like most cities near large bodies of water, feels the power of nature each day. The wind is strongest in springtime when the temperatures in the interior can reach peaks of 100 degrees or more while the Pacific Ocean remains cold. If you've ever stuck your toes into the Pacific Ocean in Northern California, you will remember the chill sent through your bones with that bare touch. Since moving to the city, we have lived in high-rises that exacerbate the wind that comes directly from the ocean. The buildings create tunnels that thrust the wind down the street, whipping tree branches, hats, and people.

The fierce wind made me think of the few birds that populate the courtyard framed by the building complex we live in. The trees there sway, rustle, and bend with the wind. Usually, the finches sing early in the morning, and I watch them as they fly up three more stories to a small deck that has plantings along the railings. The finches hide there, away from the wind, for a little while. Yesterday, a crow tried to cling to the top of one of the branches of the trees but gave up after being pitched back and forth.

The bang of the window woke me from a sound sleep. I tried my latest sleep-inducing exercise, Cognitive Shuffling, which I recently read about in a NY Times article. I mumbled Pluto to myself and then added a string of words beginning with P until I ran out, then started with L words, and somewhere in there, I fell back to sleep. I sleep much better than I did when I was younger and was full of responsibilities and concerns, and even younger when I was full of fear of the dark and the sound of the mantel clock ticking in another room. I don't nap during the day because I think of my dad, an insomniac, who would stretch out on the living room floor during his afternoon break from his studio, but then would toss and turn most of the night.

I have tried many different remedies for getting to sleep. Now, I don't do any of them because I usually don't need them. I sleep profoundly. Previously, I murmured to myself a set of songs. Or I counted backwards from 100. I found reading to be helpful for a long time, but then the novels that I chose were so compelling that I stayed awake longer just to finish one more chapter. Sometimes, I turn to Walking: One Step at a Time and Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge because each of them offer thoughts on simplicity, life challenges, and the need to step away from a busy life (or right now, from the news) to examine the ordinary things that continue no matter what else is occurring. Now, if I find myself taking a long time to go to sleep, I get up, walk around, and go back to bed. That window last night banging brought back lots of anxious thoughts and tensions from the news, and I gladly looked for a way to distract my mind to sleep. Pluto, photo, ping, phone, pong, pill, plunge, pollen....

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Douglas Wood suggested these words to use this weekend: Gumption. Grit. Fortitude.Righteousness.Freedom. Independence: Pride. Persistence. Stamina. Tenacity. Backbone. Determination. Resolution. Honor. Dignity. Empathy. Sacrifice. Service.  All good words to remember and to instill in everything we do.

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Something for me to celebrate: my workspace is finally getting cleared of all the art supplies I brought with me. I have found a place for paints, brushes, cans of colored pencils, trays of marking pens, sketchbooks, glue, and all the other supplies that encourage me to be creative and try new things. I now have a clear space that I have been missing for a long time.

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Check out Kristen Doty's website for some spectacular colored pencil artwork:

https://kristendoty.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacciEyUTfWXGPmP3tu9KeDgakK0ZIK10mWOYVZ7pQ1bQHS-YJOVLw7APf-CRg_aem_CsxKXs6T0V3GYGJc-ZJaqQ

DIFFERENT WINDOWS OF LIFE

Country Road by Bill Slavin

The light captured us. We chose our new place because of the light streaming through every large window in each room. The windows let the light in, which also means I can see through them into the windows of the building next to us, where I catch a glimpse of the new mom as she walks her baby back and forth, and the man sitting in the opposite building reading in his easy chair. I can see people being dropped off by Lyft/Uber/taxi below and watch as others put suitcases in trunks and drive away. And they all can see me.

We've always loved looking out the windows in any place we've lived, but we've never been able to see directly into our neighbors' windows before. There was a tall wooden wall outside our first apartment in Mountain View, a driveway and garages in another, and our first two home purchases were corner lots with windows facing away from other homes. In Japan, we were 14 stories up with a small park and a busy city street below. No other buildings impeded our view of Mt. Fuji. In France, our patio doors looked out across a narrow street onto the roof of another building. Our last house in Danville was placed on a lot at an angle, so our windows didn't look directly into our neighbors. Our new view is disconcerting. We sometimes feel like Peeping Toms. We are working to look without really looking at anything that catches our eyes. We now understand why the people in many of the condos keep their curtains drawn all the time. We are discovering one way that city life can be so different.

Window by Bill Slavin

This past weekend, we were reminded of the difference when we took a trip to Pt. Reyes Station, a small town near the edge of the Pacific Coast and positioned close to the San Andreas Fault (it runs through the bay on one side of Pt. Reyes). Bill came to wander around Tomales Bay State Park to capture on camera some of the tule elk living in the park. He didn't see any elk, but he took some evocative pictures.

Ranch Land Near Tomales Bay by Bill Slavin

I came for the writers' workshop, "Writing the Language of Color in the Home of Sam Francis," led by Elizabeth Fishel and Susan Tillet. The workshop was held in the house where Sam Francis, the abstract expressionist, lived with his fifth wife. When he died, the house was purchased to become a writer's retreat. The interior walls of the house have been painted with colors that Sam Francis used in his paintings. Bookcases line the main room of the house, painted a deep teal. Three of the tall bookcases are filled with books written by writers who came to the house to write. The spirit of many of the writers fills this vibrant house.

Wandering through the natural garden mixed with its flowering native, some non-native plants and bumblebees, I came across a few small sculptures, set not as the dominant theme of the garden, but tucked into the bushes and trees as if they too had grown up out of the ground. I stopped, listened, and heard nothing but silence until a few birds chirped in the apple trees. The silence made me think of our city life, where there is a constant thrum like a river, sometimes a roar, of traffic. I took a deep breath of the silence before I sat down to write.

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Mesa Refuge in Pt. Reyes offers space for writers and activists:

https://mesarefuge.org

Look for future writers' workshops with Elizabeth Fishel and Susan Tillet here:

http://wednesdaywriters.com/events.html

Check out Sam Francis' work here:

https://samfrancis.com

View from the window   May 2025

THINGS TO KEEP

 

Some people can enjoy the moment and do not need keepsakes as reminders of their memories. I am not one of them. I may have inherited that trait from my dad. When I first looked through my dad's memorabilia after both parents died, I thought what he left behind was evidence of a man who wanted to achieve recognition. He kept records from an early age, including awards, newspaper articles, photo albums filled with people he knew and places he traveled to, and once he received the recognition, binders full of fan letters.

As a kid, I was encouraged to keep scrapbooks (I think to keep my sister and me out of my mother's hair). The activity became a custom that I've carried in some form throughout my life. Besides the events that went into the scrapbooks up until I graduated from college, I've also kept records of what I eat each day, my weight, blood pressure readings, and several journals full of comments about books I've read. I think of one of my aunts who kept meticulous records of the weather in the middle of Minnesota. As a farming family, those records were important. I can't say the same about my own. They are a habit acquired and never really questioned. They are a moment of silence at the beginning of my day. Some people greet the sun in the morning. My habit is to write down the day and date. My way to acknowledge a new day.

Bill rediscovered a photo album of his ancestors and relatives that I had assembled many years ago from photos and papers handed down from his parents when they moved into a senior living home. Bill, unlike me, is not a saver of mementos, but he has spent time, as we sort through our things, going through this unexpected treasure as well as old yearbooks. We saved all of these things because we had the space and through inertia, but now, finding them again has given us time to reflect on our lives before we pass these treasures on to someone else.

Inspired by a circle. A labyrinth 4 life.
Wander. Wonder. Live.
Life is a series of circles and spirals.
By Martha Slavin

Keeping all the pieces of a life can become a burden. On the other hand, if I hadn't kept some of the scraps of paper, letters she wrote, and her old photo albums, I would not know that my mother tried out for a movie part in Los Angeles or about her young life living in Ohio that she recorded hastily on a piece of scrap paper. Within the photo albums, I found copies of senior class pages from her yearbook. I made copies of those photos on an inkjet printer. I washed the copies with water, which allowed the ink to flow away. What I had left was a bluish-purple faded memory of each photo. 

The young men in the photos would have been the right age to become part of the WWII military. I don't know their personal histories, but I used the photos as a symbol of all the lost boys who go to war. I cut a piece of Hahnemuele printing paper into long strips, scrawled some dry brushstrokes of watercolor across the surface, and glued the photos down. Throughout the book, I wrote a poem about the effects of war on each generation since WWII.

Lost Boys: Lost to real manhood
Off to war
Chanting U.S.A. Stomping cadence.
Brash. Steely-eyed. Bravado.
Immortal, young gods,
Buried in the trenches, in the foxholes,
by one step on an IED
Leaving
Silence
Some return calmed by their generation's balm:
Alcohol. Cocaine. Meth.
Living on the streets.
Forgotten.

I go back and forth about keeping things. Is it a burden or an opportunity? I've come to the conclusion it is both. Most items are opportunities, but only if I can find the time to sit and think about them. Otherwise, they just become part of the stacks of our lives.

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 Norm Eisen's parents told him:

“Your job is not to finish the work—but neither are you, the child of free people, not to do your share.”

SANGUINE OR NOT

Life Lines #2 by Martha Slavin

 An artist friend sent me a square of ArtGraf water-soluble tailor's chalk called Sanguine, a blood red color. It's a beautiful hue, and the chalk can be drawn on its tip to create fine lines or used on its broad edge and scraped across the page to resemble dry dirt, wood, or brick walls. Brushing the marks with some water intensifies the color.

Mark making with an ArtGraf chalk

"Sang" is the French word for blood. The French extended the word into sanguine, which means optimistic. And sang is also found in the word sang-froid (blood-cold) an old version of keeping one's cool. And recently, the French have added the slang term, Le Sang, a phrase that suggests blood is thicker than water, or slightly differently, that friends are like family. In English, sanguine also means cheerfully optimistic, but also indicates a ruddy complexion. MairimeriBlu, an Italian watercolor paint maker, produces a color called Sangue di Drago (Dragon's Blood) that creates a ruddy skin color for watercolor.

I gravitate to this blood-red, rusty-looking color often, whether in watercolor or book-arts, or calligraphy. I choose it along with Aurelin Yellow and Cerulean Blue as my primary colors from which I mix other colors.

Merchant by Martha Slavin

After many weeks, my desk is finally reappearing from under the layers of art supplies that cluttered the surface. While sorting through my art supplies, I haven't had the energy or space to make art. But tomorrow, with a clean work space, I will be taking a color pencil class. I was sent the supply list weeks ago, just after I made a donation of art materials to a local non-profit that provides materials to teachers. I gave away my last box of wax-based color pencils. I figured I didn't need the wax-based ones because when I use colored pencils, I use water-soluble ones and have a jar full of them.  Checking the class supply list the other day, I found the request for either wax- or oil-based colored pencils. I sighed. Oh, well, I told myself the kind I have will have to do. I'm sanguine that what I have will work.

Sanguine colors the X

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One of the best things about knowing talented calligraphers is that, occasionally, when I open our mailbox, I find an envelope in the mail that is as exquisite as this one. Thank you, RM.

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Mark Twain: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

SHARED VALUES

One of my favorite quotes

 We are seeing the end.

That short sentence stopped me in my tracks as I wrote it. What did I mean? Are we coming to the end of our lives? Have all the chaotic events raining down on our country been halted? Has disrespect for the rule of law won, and is what we know as civilization coming to an end, to be replaced by a cruel, dog-eat-dog world? Those thoughts grew larger and larger as I stopped writing, when I only meant to say that our two-year vagabond quest to find a new home is coming to a close. We are unpacking and sorting the last tidbits. We are doing normal, everyday chores. Art supplies are stored in boxes, writing implements are tucked into drawers, paint jars are bundled into carts, kitchen equipment rests behind cabinet doors. We feel more rested and think of new adventures as we start this new phase of our lives. Still mindful of the news around us, we draw support from friends and let our voices be heard when we can.

Two thought-provoking books

I've picked up The Righteous Mind, a book by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who wrote The Happiness Hypothesis. In this new book, he suggests that we are born with an innate sense of morality and justice, that our normal tendencies for those values rise up when we are confronted with their opposites, that we naturally collect in groups, which can lead us in different directions, either to grow and change or become hide-bound in our beliefs. His thoughts identify much of what we have experienced in the world today. I recall that as a young teacher, my principal reminded me that not everyone shares the same values. I remember being taken aback by that statement, even though I had lived through the 1950s and 1960s, marked by wars and the civil rights movement, and seen tremendous strife between people. I still believed that deep inside, we had the same core values. I was taken aback again when Trump was re-elected. I was confused and stunned by other people's choices. I know we all have the dark side within us, but I thought we had evolved beyond those negative reactions. I was wrong. I need to remind myself of what I hold dear.

Haidt's book reminded me of an exercise I found to determine what I value. The exercise starts with three categories: The Individual, Those Around You, and For the World. I sorted the ideas from most important to least for each category. Like the sentence, "We are seeing the end," I found each phrase had a deep meaning, which made it difficult to put them in order of significance. None of these include the negative values that have risen again. Here are the choices in random sequence:

Justice and morality                Beauty and creativity               Knowledge and truth

Love and compassion              Respect for the environment     Health and well-being

Joy and laughter        Appreciation and contentment         Faith and forgiveness

In what order would you place these concepts? 

Does each category make the order of the concepts different for you?

We are seeing in the world today what we value most.

A PAUSE FOR ALL THINGS ALIVE

Robin's Nest by Martha Slavin

Crows, seagulls, sparrows, pigeons, an occasional hawk, and one robin couple congregate in our neighborhood. The robins chirp at each other with their distinctive cry, perhaps while they are looking for a good nesting site outside our window in the cherry blossom tree, whose leaves have begun to unfurl, the last of the trees in our area to flourish. One morning, a crow swooped down into the courtyard, and the robins took wing and haven't returned.

This morning, we watched as a crow made sweeping circles around the roof and windows of the building across the street. At first, we thought this unusual behavior was the crow having fun, but then the crow descended behind some ducting on the roof, only to appear moments later with two other birds to fly behind another rooftop ledge. A moment of quiet, and then a hawk, a crow's natural enemy, burst out, diving and swinging out of the crows' attack. The hawk rose and flew away with the crows in hot pursuit.

We have Pacific Madrone trees on our block. Around the corner, magnolia trees line the street. The courtyard outside our window is full of Japanese maples, cherry trees, and red maples, which give us color in three seasons and bring birds, including the parrots that have escaped into the wild. We can hear the parrots' raucous chatter but find it hard to see the groups gathered in the dense foliage of the street trees. Occasionally, we enjoy songbird finches trying to find a place in a city that doesn't welcome them.

A ride on the N Judah Muni line from its beginnings at the end of Judah Street in the Sunset District to the Embarcadero gave me a glimpse of the entire city. The Sunset District near the edge of the Pacific Ocean used to be all sand dunes. Builders constructed modest homes in the early twentieth century, and the area continued to be developed until the dunes disappeared. Rolling through the Sunset on the trolley, I saw few streets lined with trees. Without trees, the streets seemed bleak and uninviting in the looming fog. At the end of the Sunset, the N Judah descends into a tunnel. As we moved towards the opening, I felt as if I were on an amusement ride going into another world. When we came out, we were in the Noe Valley/DuBose Triangle area, a section of town filled with tall trees, hills, and well-maintained Victorian homes. At the edge of that area, the N Judah descended again into another tunnel that follows the path of the BART subway line across the downtown section of San Francisco to emerge again into the open at the Embarcadero and the Ferry Building with views of the Bay, container ships, and sailboats. The N Judah continues to the CalTrains Depot, but I got off at the Brannan stop, a short distance from our new home.

Today, as we had a picnic lunch near South Park, I watched a yellow and black Swallowtail flit from one tree to another across the street. The butterfly reminded me of a poem I wrote after seeing another Swallowtail cross a busy street:

A swallowtail

At a crosswalk

On a six-lane street

Fluttered across with the light.

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On Mother's Day, to honor my mother, long gone now, I am including two of her art pieces:  a flower drawing in pencil and an oil painting in the Impressionist style, of a girl fixing her hair. I was the model for this painting. It took long hours of my sitting still, holding my hair above my face, but gave the two of us time to be together.

by Esther B. Heimdahl

Flowers by Esther B. Heimdahl

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 "I am thinking of artists such as Frida Khalo, Corita Kent or Louise Bourgeois, and many others. I hope with all my heart that contemporary art can open our eyes, helping us to value adequately the contribution of women, as co-protagonists of the human adventure."  Pope Francis  

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APRIL 2025 New Window View

NEW AND OLD SURPRISES

Moving back to a city has reminded me how much has changed and how little has changed. The urban core holds people from all walks of life, with diverse ethnicities and economic differences. Suburban towns tend to be more homogeneous. I grew up in a suburb on the outskirts of Los Angeles. At the time, the town was all White, the town next to it was a place for middle-class Blacks, and on the other side, a town for middle-income Hispanics. During my childhood, few Americans of Asian descent lived beyond LA city limits. My hometown was known for having the most swimming pools in the area and for residents who belonged to the John Birch Society, an early far-right extremist group. I moved away as soon as I could.

Going back to the East Bay town in Northern California where we lived for more than 40 years, I realized we had chosen a similar town to my hometown. We selected Danville because we could afford housing there, and it was equi-distance from my job in Fremont and Bill's office in San Francisco, but we also felt comfortable in the community. We loved the green hills, good neighbors, and the simple pleasures of gardening and Sunday BBQs. We connected with people with similar values and beliefs in fairness and equity. During the first Trump administration, the dark side of our town emerged on weekends. We cringed as we watched truck parades with large Trump signs rumble through the town with horns blaring. Groups of Trump fans with signs stood on street corners, yelling at passersby. We couldn't understand what created such fervor, but they exhibited the rising divisions between Americans.

Cities often provide space for new changes in how we live. Waymo cars are a curious and fast-moving part of San Francisco now. Driverless cars don't exist in the suburbs yet. We see them on the city streets all the time, but they are still in an experimental stage in the city. Sometimes they get confused and just stop, impeding traffic behind them. One afternoon, we were driving home, waiting at a red light, and noticed a Waymo car by our side letting out a passenger. Then the Waymo flicked on its turn signal to try to enter traffic lanes again. No one would let the car in. I thought about etiquette rules. Do you have to be polite to a Waymo?

I still take time in both the city and towns to sit and sketch the people I see. Collected together, I wouldn't know whether those people lived in the city or the suburbs. They are all just people. 

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"Oh magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words." Betty Smith

While our son was in elementary school, I volunteered to work with some  students in his first grade class. One girl had struggled to learn to read. One day as we sat together, she suddenly began to read the words. I'll never forget her joy and excitement. If you have children, grandchildren, or can tutor young people, you will understand the magic of learning to read.

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Spring is in full swing now. Birds are nesting and migrating. Check out this website to see the migration all across the Americas.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/when-will-spring-bird-migration-hit-its-peak-birdcast-has-answers/?utm_campaign=Lab%20eNews%202024&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_Sr2-JpRXsf8hibB3KJd2Q0CZ2jS_k2K1hX9qjbYS0pCo_tbALet2gF9jHQw8obNUTEiH_ECUNisvNvQD5z8AU_66Epg&_hsmi=357468445&utm_content=357467838&utm_source=hs_email  

BORROWING ART

During a trip to Chicago several years ago, I stood over a bridge and looked down on the busy street below. The street extended to the horizon and the perspective reminded me of Wayne Thiebaud's city paintings with streets that look like they are hanging off a cliff. Thiebaud doesn't use traditional perspective in his cityscapes. Instead, he abstracts the images into geometric shapes. The streets look like they run straight down a cliff with only a rectangle at the bottom to keep them from falling off the page. I took a quick photo because I thought the photo would help me paint the scene.  I wanted to try something similar to Thiebaud's. but make my painting with one-point perspective. That would be a challenge for me. I've never had the patience to draw street scenes using perspective as a guide. My lines tend to waver and wander over the page instead of making the precise, crisp lines drawn with a ruler. I tried painting this scene several times without much success.

Wayne Thiebaud might have said to me, "An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities."

A friend and I went to the Thiebaud exhibit that is now on view at the Legion of Honor Museum near the Presidio in San Francisco. In my lifetime, I have been to many exhibits of both very familiar and unknown artists. Though I knew about Thiebaud and his bold images, this exhibit surprised me and made me want to linger over each part of the exhibit. Thiebaud was an artist and also a favorite teacher at UC Davis for many years. He believed in borrowing ideas from other artists, learning their techniques by copying their work, and translating those ideas into his paintings.

He once said, "If you stare at an object, as you do when you paint, there is no point at which you stop learning from it."

The exhibit explains Thiebaud's thinking about borrowing art. Each section shows work by other artists and then paintings done in the same style by Thiebaud. His painting, Art Comes from Art, is a tour de force of that practice. On four open shelves sit twelve paintings, each seemingly by a different artist. Instead, each small painting was copied exactly by Thiebaud, yet also includes his signature techniques: vivid colors outlining objects, starkness, bold shadows that lend mystery to the painting, and lavish use of paint. The backgrounds of many of his paintings are often bold whites with different undertones.

Art Comes from Art by Wayne Thiebaud

Sometimes Thiebaud is classified as a Pop Artist because he often painted ordinary objects such as gumball machines or a slice of pie or cake. Instead of the flat, printed images of Pop Art though, Thiebaud uses gobs of paint to show the lushness of the cake's icing and surrounds the object with thickly applied colors. Thiebaud spent time during the '60s with Jaspar Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, and other contemporary artists. I am sure all their ideas about art rubbed off on each other.

Thiebaud often painted portraits of people based on a similar portrait done by an artist from a previous time. If you've seen his portraits, you could compare them to Edward Hopper's way of presenting a person starkly alone. Some of his style may have rubbed off on someone like Amy Sherald, known for her portrait of Michelle Obama, who paints portraits using the same strong, intense images and facial expressions and sense of being alone as Thiebaud.

After the museum visit, I pulled out my sketchbook and decided to try the Chicago street scene again. This time I made more of an effort to use one-point perspective. As I drew I thought of Thiebaud's paintings and how in control he was of each image. As I worked, I thought, "Here I am taking a lesson from Thiebaud. I'm copying his style."

Wayne Thiebaud said about this practice, "I believe very much in the tradition that art comes from art and nothing else. Art for me simply means doing something extraordinarily well...."

To see more of Thiebaud's work, go to:

https://www.acquavellagalleries.com/artists/wayne-thiebaud

or tour the Legion of Honor while the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit is on view: today through August 17.

Find more quotes by Thiebaud here:

https://www.azquotes.com/author/43221-Wayne_Thiebaud

Compare Amy Sherald's work to Wayne Thiebaud's here:

https://whitney.org/exhibitions/amy-sherald

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Read the New York Times' informative article about Pope Francis' favorite painting:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/24/arts/pope-francis-caravaggio.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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."