FIVE YEARS AGO

The majesty of mountains

Living in a city means that birds are a subtle part of our lives. We notice when we see a bush full of birds, we watch as seagulls soar, and we stop to look for the hawk, whose screech catches our attention. We used to sit in our backyard and watch as flocks of birds gobbled up the seeds at our feeders. We could identify each different species who either stopped on their migratory path or nested in our backyard. In the city, birds are rare in comparison.

Bill and I have made a lot of changes in the last five years. We've downsized and moved from a suburb to a city. We've adapted to the changes and often joke about how everything in our new home needs to be much smaller than in our previous place. An article in the NY Times reminded me how much life on Earth has changed in the same time frame. The article described how the beaks of juncos that live in urban Los Angeles have adapted to the different food, such as bread and pizza, they find in the city instead of the seeds and insects they hunt for in the wild. Juncos are those small birds with white breasts, mottled feathers and a black hood dropped over their heads that flit about in backyards and forests. During the pandemic, their beaks changed back to their natural shape because the urban food sources disappeared. Now researchers have found that the juncos are once again adapting back to urban life and their beaks are changing shape again.

Mt. Shasta with snow

Five years ago, we were just at the start of the COVID pandemic, which disrupted life on Earth. Do you remember the silent, empty streets, the people standing at windows banging drums or singing, the body bags piling up outside of hospitals, and the skies clear of smog? The more natural world changed in response to the lack of human presence. Birds modified the volume of their songs, and animals ventured in places that people had abandoned. All manner of changes occurred. When the vaccines eased the threat of the pandemic and we got back to our normal life, we shoved aside the memories of the pandemic though we are still feeling its effects. Many people hated the isolation and/or the confined space of the pandemic. Their anger has been released in small town gatherings and in our federal government. Our mean streak has been flourishing.

2025 has proved how important the understanding of history can be. We look back and see cycles of progress and retrenchment. Our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, which have lain under glass in Washington, D.C. for so long, have become the defining must-read of the year. Some of us carry a copy with us. Some of us have read the documents for the first time. Some of us have re-read the three documents again. Small concerned groups have mushroomed all over the country to protect those documents, their meaning and people protected by them.We worry about how our democracy will survive. I think of the juncos and their ability to adapt and learn and hope we can keep the founding ideas of freedom, equality, justice, and opportunity for all alive in 2026 and beyond.

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Changes in juncos' beaks:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/science/covid-ecology-anthropause-birds.html 

Read the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights here:

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs

AN ORDINARY KITCHEN TABLE

How do artists create something extraordinary from something ordinary? What would you do with pieces of wire, felt, plastic netting, zippers, bobbins, pull tabs, flossers, and shells? To create something with these disparate objects needs a combination of discipline and abandon along with being able to seeing something from a different point of view.

Last summer, the Ruth Asawa exhibition at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco (now moved to NYC) provided viewers a showcase of all of Asawa's art interests including her meticulous drawings of natural elements to woven wire sculptures. The exhibit also included examples of her teachings within her community to develop creative thinking in everyone. The exhibit invited us into Asawa's home, which had numerous woven art projects hanging from the rafters while unfinished work lay on a long wood table constructed by her architect husband, Albert Lanier.

The table reminded me of sitting at our kitchen table as a young child, mostly unaware of the world around me. Our table, unlike Asawa's, was one of those linoleum and shiny metal tubing tables popular in the 1950s and 60s and took up most of the space in the kitchen nook. We ate our meals there, saving the maple dining table for Sunday dinners and special events. We watched our mom making Sandbakelses, a Norwegian Christmas cookie, that took her all day to form in small, fluted tin cups. The table became the place where we did homework together, told stories and argued with each other, and answered the phone set on the counter next to the table. My sister and I made paper sculpture ornaments based on origami to hang in the windows and on our Christmas tree. We weren't a family that was allowed to leave stacks of books or collect mounds of stray papers on the table. When not in use for meals or projects, the table was swept clean.

String Art assignment I used to give my students

Ruth Asawa's kitchen table now rests at Ruth's Table, an art class and exhibition space connected to the Bethany Senior Center and Front Porch organization in San Francisco. The center, founded by Lola Fraknoi and supported by Asawa, has an exhibit of basket weavers' work (today is the last day) that uses all the supplies listed in the first paragraph of this post.

Basketweaving is a craft that requires the same meticulous attention to detail that calligraphy and origami need. The baskets on display include a wide range of shapes, including some that test the limits of the word, "Basket." One flat piece is made from woven computer cables and another is made from wire and the horsehair from old violin bows. Another incorporates indigo and persimmon dyed paper into a basket shape made from dyed Japanese Sedori cane.

The two exhibits are also a reminder of our past. Ruth Asawa's family, separated from their father, were sent to our internment camps during WWII. Her retrospective exhibit shows  her resilience during that time and as she said, "...good things come through adversity."

During her stay at the camp, she spent most of her time drawing and painting. She was given a scholarship by the Quaker Japanese American Student Relocation Council that allowed her to leave the camp to attend art school in Wisconsin. She didn't see her family again until the end of WWII. Her words about her time in the camp amaze me,

"I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am."

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Visit Ruth's Table near the Mission in San Francisco

https://www.ruthstable.org

https://ruthstable.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room/ 

https://densho.org/learn/introduction/american-concentration-camps/

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A shout out to the people of America who stand up for friends nd neighbors:

https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/the-americans-who-stood-up-for-immigrants-in-2025?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

MARVELS

A speck, something smaller than a grain of sand, wandered over my grocery list tablet on our kitchen counter. I looked twice to be sure of what I saw. An insect so small that if I hadn't been staring at the paper trying to remember what I needed to add to my grocery list, it would have gone unobserved. I asked myself, "What could be that small and still exist and not be a microbe? Did I really see it?" A couple of days later, the same-sized insect scooted across my paper tablet again. It made me think of all the living things we cannot see or haven't found yet. According to NPR, there are over 2.5 million species on Earth, and many more thousands still undiscovered.

Human beings have long elevated themselves about other creatures on our planet. We have thought we were the only species to use tools, speak in languages, and employ complex problem solving skills. Scientists are finding more and more species who do the same. Crows use tools, other birds weave intricate nests, monkeys give out different warning signals to their group depending on whether danger is coming from the air, a tree, or the ground, and puffer fish inscribe in the sand beautiful 3-dimensional patterns that will become nests for the eggs the female lays and the male tends.

Perhaps one trait we have, our imagination, would be hard to verify in other species. Our imagination has helped us to tell stories and to invent new ways of living. Where else but our imagination would we find creatures such as the trolls in Norse fairy tales and the Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels or Pokemon or a Kraken? I thought of those mythical creatures while I stood in line at the cafe at the Legion of Honor and looked up at a group of shiny figures above the coffee machines, display cabinets and stacks of china cups on the counters. Each assemblage, called Mimmos by Rosalia Baltazar Shoemaker, their creator, was made from small implements used in a kitchen. Scattered throughout the rest of the room were more of these fanciful creatures constructed from tart tins, colanders, utensils, and shiny stainless steel bowls. I thought of toddlers who love to play with all those kinds of tools, banging on pans, building structures, and cutting shapes from dough. I wondered if at night these figures come out to play. In a museum that showcases the talents and skills of great artists (right now, a comparison of Manet and Morisol), what a treat to find such whimsical beings created from someone's playful imagination of today.

Wikipedia's List of legendary creatures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type

Watch this video to see an amazing task done by a puffer fish:

A pufferfish makes a nest:  https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/a-pufferfishs-masterpiece/a-pufferfishs-masterpiece/ 

NEW WAYS OF SEEING

I have two sisters and more than a dozen cousins. We share a dry sense of humor, creativity, and curiosity. Recently, two of my relatives said something that made me pause and appreciate them even more. My closest sister Linda answered my question about favorite seasons by saying, "Favorite season? I've had that question before and have never been able to answer. Each season has its goodness and its badness. I think I welcome the change each season brings, not the season itself."

Donna Kaulkin, a writer friend (though I think of her as part of my extended family), answered in the opposite way: "When I lived on the East Coast, it was autumn, the raucous beauty and the nip in the air. Or maybe summer, when I could swim in the ocean and have fun on the boardwalk with friends and where I met my husband. Or maybe winter when we were snowed in, cozy and rosy, until cabin fever swept in. Or spring? Ah, spring--ask the poets." 

I had been so focused on one season as a response that I didn't think in those two different directions. Sure, I always pick autumn as my favorite season, but Linda and Donna offered other perspectives, the time when the seasons change, and the beauty and memories of each season.

"Autumn"  
 a painting made from failed watercolors by Martha Slavin

Janet, a cousin, sent our first card of the holiday season. It was a simple looking email with its edges decorated in nature. She asked, "What books am I grateful for?" the first question of a thoughtful advent calendar she has designed. I was taken aback by the question, just as I had been to the responses from my sister and my friend about the seasons.

I had thought of books that influenced my life, such as Mary Poppins and Jane Eyre for their depiction of strong women, spiritual texts that offered moral guidance, and The Wild Places and Wild Comfort, two books that showed me to look and think deeper about the natural word. My list includes all the original writings, such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Cervantes' Don Quixote, from my college humanities classes that broaden my view of the world, and books about writing by Natalie Goldberg,  Perrine's Sound and Sense and Koch's Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, which I used as a teacher and to develop my own writing. I hadn't thought of the idea of being grateful for those books. I knew their value in shaping my life, but now I can say thank you to those authors who came into my thoughts through their words on a page.

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Here's a chance to read some of Donna Kaulkin's stories. You will be better for it!

https://donnatellsstories.com/category/stories/

Other writers that I have mentioned before:

Robert MacFarlane, The Wild Places

Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort

Dante, Divine Comedy

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Done the Bones,

Kenneth Koch, Wishes, Lies, and Dreams

Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense

November's Window View

 

WHAT IS OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Groups of crows circling the city looking for a place to roost
  by Bill Slavin

A block and a half away from us sits South Park, a small park lined with two and three story buildings. It's a surprise to find the park among what was once the industrial side of San Francisco.  Built in 1855, the park was in the middle of a block of mansions and townhouses for the wealthy. It later became the hub of the Japanese American community. After the 1906 earthquake and fire when much of the housing in the area was destroyed, small commercial buildings replaced much of the housing except for the Madrid Hotel, which remains today. Immigrants from other places moved in. In the late 20th century, small tech start-ups, including Twitter, occupied the block-long space. The park's buildings occupancy followed the boom and bust era of tech start-ups and COVID.

While we were looking for a good cup of coffee near our new home in South Beach, we discovered Blue Bottle cafe, a local coffee brand start-up since acquired by Nestle, housed in an old brick building at one end of the park. With our coffees in hand, we wandered down the park, savoring the greenery and tall trees that shaded the block. Many of the windows of the buildings displayed For Lease signs, the result of the COVID pandemic that decimated so many small businesses in San Francisco and elsewhere.

The park is a quiet, peaceful place against the noise of the city. At the other end of the park, children climb the undulating rope structure and hop onto swings. We sat in the park and watched a few people come out of the buildings at lunch to sit together around one of the round metal tables that dot the park. We thought back to our own work life working full time. Bill rarely had time for lunch and worked long hours, and I ate lunch within a crowded, stuffy staff room and played Hearts with other teachers, but spent most of my time in my classroom. Company/school camaraderie came mostly from off-site events such as seminars, yearly picnics, or holiday parties.

Since we first arrived in the neighborhood last spring, we noticed that Blue Bottle now has a line out its solid wooden door and groups of young people emerge from more and more of the buildings, and fewer For Lease signs hang from windows. Trucks with construction equipment park at the curbs and the construction noises can be heard from inside the buildings. The park seems to be coming back to life again.

Knowledge is Golden
By Bill Slavin

We laugh a little when we see the groups of tech bros walking to lunch. They are young and eagerly talk in a tech language we no longer comprehend. They are mostly tech "bros" with maybe one or two women walking in the groups. We wonder about what has changed or not changed that there are so few women as part of these groups. We overheard one group recently complaining that their company is now requiring them to return full time to the office, giving up remote work for the need to develop a company culture and better idea exchange, concepts that were so important when we were working.

We've noticed that some neighborhoods in San Francisco such as the Marina, Chestnut Street, Potrero Hill, and Union Street are thriving. These busy districts are easily accessible by public transportation, have buildings that are one-to-three stories that don't dominate the streets. The streets are narrow enough that traffic doesn't speed through the district, and they are tree-lined. Other parts of the city haven't rebounded as quickly. I look at their empty places and think that we need to find new uses for those first floor rooms. 

Pier 70
by Bill Slavin

Walking along the SF Bay Trail, we are heartened to see the development occurring along the Bay. Around Crane Cove old industrial buildings that used to house shipbuilders have been turned into new work spaces and spaces for restaurants and physical fitness, keeping the inside structures intact. I think about how difficult it would be to plan housing, work spaces, transportation, and other activities in one area. It would be hard to get it right, but the people who built South Park came up with a good solution: a park, a few eateries, trees, and "people-sized" buildings that encourage people to find a place there.

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Something to think about this week:

Andrew Wyeth:

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -- the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

What is your favorite season and why?

 Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

"People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other."

How hard is it to follow this idea?

CHANGES

The changes in the seasons are minimal in San Francisco. Like in Spring, the weather slips back and forth from the heat of summer to chilly weather with just a taste of autumn in the wind. This year, before the trees turned brilliant fall colors, a strong wind and rainstorm blew most of the leaves down. The brownish leaves skittered across the streets and sidewalks and piled up against the buildings.

We've noticed in our neighborhood that the sun becomes the main indicator of change. The sun has shifted to be more northeast than straight east in the morning. We are getting reflected light from skyscrapers through our windows in the morning that the sun hasn't touched before and we see the long, dark shadows created by the slant of the sun in the afternoon.

One of my aunts kept track of the weather each day. She and my uncle were farmers so that was important information for them. I keep track of other things: what I eat, my weight, books I've read, and movies we've watched. Like my aunt, doing something on a daily basis works for me.  Time and the changes that come with it are threads that run through my art and writing.

This week I decided to take objects from my collection of art supplies and pieces of nature I've picked up and do a drawing or painting each day for 30 days. I want to concentrate on the shadows because the shadows are often the most interesting mix of colors. I am keeping each design simple so that I can complete the painting or drawing in one sitting. Creating a good painting, for me, depends on a good drawing underneath.

Crows live in San Francisco and they also seem to have daily practices. Usually, we see solitary ones perched on light poles or on the railings on the Embarcadero. In the last weeks of October as the sun began to set, masses of crows started circling in a wide aerial path through the city. They landed for a few minutes on the billboard north of us or stood on the edges of roofs. They are more than a murder of crows, more like a dark storm, as they sweep through the spaces between skyscrapers. They are not as disciplined as a murmuration of starlings because they don't follow a leader or a pattern of flight. Our first sighting made both of us anxious as they plunged and cawed near our windows. Was this an invasion?

At 5:30 P.M. they all land for a few moments and then just as mysteriously as they arrived, they are gone. We wonder where they go at night and why they have suddenly started circling the city. As night falls earlier and earlier, we can still see them start to gather and hear their caws, but by 5:30 it is dark and we can't see the crows circle through the city anymore. Time and change are always constant.

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If you care about gun safety and violence, you could work on a project to complete 30 origami boxes in 30 days. You will be participating in the Soul Box Project.

See one column of many of the boxes here:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C6IO996Lllb/?hl=en 

or on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/soulboxproject/

 

30 DAYS ON A CREATIVE WALK

Collaged by M. M. from my cut-up watercolors

A group of friends sat at lunch recently. We were discussing the changes in ordinary things from earlier years to today. We noted the difference from clocks with hands to digital watches and the use of credit cards instead of paper money. Our comments began with how easy these changes have made our lives. Then we remembered our own childhood and our time raising children and how analog clocks and paper money helped teach time, fractions, and the value of money. Without a clock with hands how do you explain what time looks like, or what parts of an hour mean? Without paper money, how do you explain the value of money, setting budgets, and counting? Suddenly we were thinking of creative responses to our questions and we wondered how teachers now explain something that is so simple and so fundamental without using the tools we had.

We all are creative thinkers, every day. Every time we ask ourselves the question, "What if...?", we are using our creative thinking skills. Our culture tends to relegate creativity to a group of people who are artists, musicians, dancers, or writers, but we are all problem solvers. Scientists, inventors, cooks, plumbers, doctors, and all human beings employ creative thinking skills. Otherwise, we would all be still sitting around fires and living in caves. Oh, that took someone with a little creativity to figure those two actions out too.

30 Days of Creativity by D. W.

I recently gave a talk about creative thinking and presented the group with a set of exercises to show that they don't have to be an artist to be creative. We all have that creative drive within us. We just need to practice it. I hope you give these exercises a try.

1. An exercise that came from the Peace Corps. How many ways can you think of to use a tin can?

2. Take a walk and observe what is around you. Do you see a space in your neighborhood for a small park? What would you add to the space to make it an inviting place? If you walk in your downtown, is there a plaza that doesn't draw people in? What woul you do to change that plaza to make it a place where people want to congregate?

These two exercises are fun to do, and even more fun to do with other people. Creative thinking is often more productive in collaboration. Someone will almost always come up with a new idea. One of those AHA moments we all have.

30 Days of Creativity by F. C.

Rules for the next exercise:

There are NO Rules!

Take a blank calendar and in one of the squares once a day for a month, doodle, write, and use your imagination to fill the squares with whatever wanders through your mind that day. I hope you will be surprised at the end of the month with the results. If you don't like what you have made, you are becoming a more creative thinker. Being creative means dealing with failures and mistakes. Creative people learn to move past failures because they often fail. That's one of the pivotal points of creative thinking. What do you do with your failure? Start over? Reimagine what you made?

I often end up with watercolors that I don't like. My solution is to cut the watercolor into one-inch squares (there's a satisfaction in that act), toss them around together and make a new arrangement with the small squares.  Several of my adaptions from ugly paintings have been selected for gallery shows. They have let me let go of that critical voice we all have.

What would you make from all of these Inches?

Two sites for blank calendars:

https://www.wiki-calendar.com/download/Blank-Calendar.pdf

https://www.saturdaygift.com/wp-content/uploads/Blank-calendar-grid-templates-free-printable-landscape-SaturdayGift.pdf 

A REMINDER OF FREEDOM

A kite from Ai WeiWei's exhibit seen through a broken window

The foghorns echoed throughout our apartment on the morning we decided to go to Alcatraz. I had been to the island in 2014 when the Chinese artist Ai WeiWei's exhibit was installed, but Bill had never been.  The comments by Trump about opening up the prison again motivated us to go. The National Park Service runs Alcatraz, the former notorious prison. We wondered if the government shutdown would affect our visit.

We purchase ticket earlier in the week during our San Francisco sunny, warm "summer" at the end of October. It is now November and the foghorns reminded us how quickly weather can change on the San Francisco Bay. All we could see out of our windows were skyscrapers wrapped in fog. The Bay has disappeared, but we decided to give Alcatraz a try.

We boarded the ferry, looked out towards the Bay, still covered in a wall of fog. As the ferry moved though, the fog receded in front of us so that by the time we got to the island, the sun was shining down on us. Our luck had changed.

Alcatraz crumbles more with each wind-blown rainstorm. The prison cells still stand at the peak of the island, but the decay is evident all around. Toilets and sinks in cells are broken, windows are cracked, some buildings are nothing but rubble. In 2014, Alcatraz became the perfect place for WeiWei's exhibit, which wandered through the crumbling buildings. At the time WeiWei was being persecuted by the Chinese government for his outspoken creative views. The Ai WeiWei installations on Alcatraz expressed ideas about freedom and incarceration, and the constraints on freedom of speech because of censorship. Though the WeiWei exhibit is long gone from the island, the memory of the messages remain in my mind. Alcatraz, a place with all of its history of incarceration, brutality, and censorship, made that exhibit twice as powerful -- similar to walking through the shadows of Auschwitz where that history still lingers in every brick and corner.

The Recreation Yard at Alcatraz

After listening to the National Park employee explain the rules for tourists, we walked towards the steep trail that leads to the top where the prison cells are located. A sign diverted our attention and led us to an exhibit about the Native American occupation of the island in 1969. The stories of the takeover filled several rooms and explained the island's previous history as a military prison for conscientious objectors in WWI, rebellious Chinese immigrants, and Native peoples who were unwilling to move to reservations or allow their children to attend the so-called Indian schools that tried to erase native tribe cultures.

The new exhibit was a truth-teller, a surprise to me after I had read that many, more comprehensive versions of our history are being removed from other nationally supervised places, such as at the Smithsonian. The exhibit shows how the Alcatraz takeover by the All Tribes group helped to develop unity among native tribes, and publicized the history of Native peoples since the migration of Whites from our eastern shores. The stories include the removal and attempts at genocide of Native Tribes and the destruction of their cultures. A summary of what the year and a half occupation by the All Tribes achieved concluded the exhibit. The island occupiers became leaders in their communities, championing the ways of native peoples, showing reslience and the importance of peaceful, non-violent actions. Today, we see some of the results of takeovers in our recognition of who lived on the land before America, the return of land to various tribes, and, recently, the removal of four dams on the Klamath River that helped salmon return to their original spawning grounds while restoring an eco-system that been lost because of the dams. The exhibit, like the WeiWei exhibit, explored themes of freedom, incarceration, and censorship, whose ideas are just as timely and powerful as they were in 2014. We still have much to do.

Article about the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the All-Tribes Occupation:

https://www.parksconservancy.org/park-e-ventures-article/alcatraz-occupation-anniversary-stories-first-person-native-american-rights-indians-of-all-tribes

General history of Alcatraz

https://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp

Because of the development of the Red Power movement, land has been returned to Native people as well as the removal of dams on the Klamath River, Watch the videos to see how the dams were de-constructed:

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/largest-dam-removal-ever-driven-by-tribes-kicks-off-klamath-river-recovery/ 

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I have resided on Tongva, Tamien-Ohlone, and Miwok land in California, and Lenape land in New York City.

COFFEE AND BOOKS

photo by Bill Slavin

Early in his career, Bill worked on a consulting job for the U.S. Post Office, with the result that for the next couple of years, whenever we visited a new town, we would drive around to the back of the post office to view the loading docks. Yes, a quirky thing to do on vacation. This past weekend, we spent a relaxing time in Pacific Grove and Carmel, walking along the Coastal Recreational Trail, taking photos of waves crashing into the rocks along the way, and watching the seagulls, pelicans, and plovers fly about the sandy beaches.

We spent the rest of our time looking for comfortable places to sit since we brought a stack of books and magazines to read. We walked up and down the Pacific Grove streets to see what had changed since our last visit and then headed to one of our favorite places, the town's bookstore and cafe, The Bookworks on Lighthouse Avenue. We wandered through the bookstore with its good selection of books, including a wall of classics aimed at younger readers with Winnie the Pooh, Mary Poppins, and John Steinbeck nestled together. We found a couple of interesting books to add to our waiting stack, walked back into the cafe, grabbed a cup of coffee, and opened up a book to read for a while.

Besides the post office, bookstores are always on our list of things to do while we are out of town. We have found wonderful independent stores such as Bookshop Santa Cruz and also the smaller Two Birds Books in Santa Cruz, as well as a local coffee house, Cat and Cloud. In Carmel, we head to River House Books, which is right next door to Carmel Valley Roasting Company, a good place for a cup of coffee. The original owners of the bookstore recently retired, but the store was purchased by the Lulu Chocolates owners, right next door to the cafe, who have kept the store's tradition of books we can't find anywhere else. How can a reader lose with coffee, chocolate, and books all together in one place?

On our way home to San Francisco, we stopped in Menlo Park at Cafe Borrone, a large cafe next to a sunlit plaza with plenty of seats under colorful umbrellas. Right next to the cafe is Kepler's Books, a store we frequented when we were first married and living in Mountain View nearby. Kepler's is still the best with its large selection of interesting books and themes to choose from. Within the store, tables were set up with displays of banned books, best books from several different decades, as well as shelves of manga with their complex illustrations.

Bill and I sat at Borrone and joked about how our vacations used to be full of physical adventures, such as skiing, cycling, and sailing, but this time we realized we needed a rest from our vagabond existence of the last couple of years. Sitting in a comfortable chair with a good book, a piece of chocolate or pastry, and a coffee was just the right antidote for us this past weekend. We didn't even drive around the back of the local post office.

In Santa Cruz:

https://bookshopsantacruz.com

https://twobirdsbooks.com/about-us/ 

https://catandcloud.com

In Pacific Grove:

https://www.bookworkspg.com 

In Carmel:

https://carmelcoffeeroasters.com     

https://thecrossroadscarmel.com/shopping/river-house-books/   

In Menlo Park:

https://www.cafeborrone.com

https://www.keplers.com

 

A MANY-SIDED COIN

"Under the Influence of Ben Shahn" by M. Slavin

Last Saturday was a beautiful day to be outside. The sun was brilliant,  and the wind didn't roll down the streets to whip around our faces. Even the weather seemed to be supporting us as we marched toward San Francisco's Civic Center. 

As Bill and I moved with the joyful, peaceful No Kings crowd, we decided to shift to the edge of the marchers so that we could find a place to sit for a while. A young Latino walked towards us, looking at the marchers, and muttered, "It's all White people."

If I had the wherewithal, I would have stopped to ask him about what he meant, but from an early age, I'd learned, as a small woman, not to stop to talk with strangers in any city. I'm still thinking about his comment. He was mostly right. The crowd was majority White, but other ethnicities filled the streets too. Or maybe he was expressing the same idea that the 92% Black women who voted in 2024 might be thinking, "We told you so!" or maybe he was a Trump supporter and didn't like the large crowd.  Or he could easily be resentful of our White privilege to be able to freely walk the streets in protest while people of color are being dragged from Home Depot parking lots, from their homes, and off the streets. I wish I had asked him what he meant.

As we walked home, we turned the corner onto the Embarcadero and merged with a large group of young people clustered at the corner of Mission and Embarcadero. They were not part of the march; instead, they all stared down at their phones, moved in unison down the Embarcadero, and stopped in front of the Google office just past Folsom. A virtual scavenger hunt was in progress. So focused on their screens, they barely looked up as we passed them to catch the streetcar.

At our stop, we looked back at the Bay Bridge and saw a long, slow line of cars coming into the City across the Bay Bridge, and wondered what else was going on that would bring so many people in. We watched as several sailboats came into the docks near Oracle Park. When we got home, we ran into a few residents carrying protest signs. We all expressed our enthusiasm for being part of something so huge and so peaceful as that day's march, and also wondered among ourselves what the next step would be.

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Ben Shahn is one of my favorite artists. He was alive and working on artwork from World War I to the end of the 1960s. His art contained images of Sacco and Vanzetti, union workers, and other protest figures. His calligraphy is a style that is popular now among calligraphers. The Jewish Museum in New York City has a retrospective of his work until this Sunday. If you can, go see it. You will see a different view of our history.

https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/ben-shahn-on-nonconformity/ till October 26

Shirley Chisholm, Ophra, Ida B. Wells, and Ruby Bridges, all Black women who made their mark in history and fought for equality, voting rights, and inclusion. Find out more about them:

https://blackwomenvote.com/about 

https://www.today.com/popculture/celebrate-black-history-4/black-women-in-history-rcna12963

RAINY DAY CHANGE

 

Seen on the Street: Ghost leaves after the rain

We had weather yesterday! It feels like fall, finally. Rain hit our windows and streaked down to the ground. Rain in October in California, just a hint of what's to come. After our dry-as-usual summer, rain is welcome in the state. Rain can be celebrated until we end up with one of those torrents that wreak havoc with neighborhoods and landscapes. But today is a good day for a little rain and a good day to find a good book to read.

I am behind in my reading. I picked up Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, which was published several years ago and has already been made into a movie. But it is worth the read. The main character is a woman and a chemist, and her story includes all the prejudices and misogynistic behavior that women have endured, especially while seeking a career in what was considered a male profession. The book reminded me of a college friend, one of three women at a tech college. She was first in her class in engineering. When she applied for graduate school, if she put down her first initials with her last name, S. A. Smith, she received numerous positive responses. When she included her full name on applications, Susan A. Smith, she got no response at all. Lessons in Chemistry is still relevant today and a good reminder of the rights of women that are being lost. On my list of favorite books for this year.

Other books that caught my eye include Olivia Hawker's The Ragged Edge of Night. I've had my fill of World War II novels, but I couldn't resist this one. It's a novel based on the true story of the grandfather of the author's husband, and what he did as a German living in a small village in Germany during the war.

I needed some uplifting this fall and turned to We Are the Change We Seek, the Speeches of Barack Obama. His words are a good reminder of the promise of America, of our ability to learn from our past and to overcome dark and difficult periods in our history.

Louise Penny is one of my favorite mystery writers and I am giving her more credit because she is a Canadian who has spoken out about the direction America is heading. I've missed several of her latest books. She is prolific. Her characters, Inspector Armaud Gamache, the police officers who he has carefully chosen to work with, and the quirky people who live in Three Pines still entertain. Penny reminds me a little of Alice Hoffman since she imbues the world in her stories with threads of history and a life force running through the natural elements of her story.

Two other recommendations:

Ten Birds That Changed the World by Stephen Moss

Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Hucksters Bamboozle the Media, the Markets, and the Masses by Moise Naim and Quico Toro

CITY SOUNDS

"Mark Making" for my first Inktober exercise

October marks two years since we moved into San Francisco, halfway through five moves after we sold our house in the suburbs. We don't miss our house and all the work entailed in keeping it in good shape. We have been on an adventure exploring different parts of the city, some of them familiar, others, new discoveries for us. We travel as much as possible by public transit.

The 22 Bus opened its doors, and we stepped out, expecting to hear all the noises of a city. Instead, at the stop in front of Galileo High School, we heard stone silence. Not a rumble of a bus, not a car gunning past us, no fire engines or police cars, no shouts from people walking on the street. We were stunned by the lack of noise. We expected to hear the calls of birds at least, but even they were silent.

The 22 Bus goes from Mission Creek through UCSF, with stops at Valencia and Fillmore streets, and ends near Chestnut Street on Laguna in the Marina. Two- and three-story stucco houses line the narrow streets crossing Laguna. Some of the streets have trees lining the walkways, while others are just concrete paths through a city. We miss the sweet chirping of small birds, such as finches and sparrows, that are so prevalent in the suburbs. We expected to hear them in the street trees near the bus stop, but all we heard was silence instead.

We used to belong to Cornell's Feeder Watch, and we spent time counting the different species of birds that landed in our former backyard. Counting birds is much easier to do in South Beach, where we now live, because there are so few birds. In the Spring, we hear finches calling out to prospective mates, and some street trees fill with their chatter during the Summer. If we step across the Embarcadero to the wharves, we can watch seagulls circle and circle, then squawk as they make a landing between the docks where the halyards of sailboats clang in the wind.

When we first moved into the city, we were surprised by the large flocks of crows. In Danville, more and more crows had moved in, battling with solitary hawks for food and nesting. But the city didn't seem an inviting place for crows. Lately, though, they have been banding together at sunset. They line the edge of the roof of the brick building across the street, then fly up to the huge billboard that faces the Bay Bridge. Restless, they disappear with sunset.

Doves used to nest in the porch eaves at our old house. Their relatives, pigeons, are city birds and feast on any scrap dropped on the ground. We watched as an older man flung down torn pieces of bread, instead of feeding using birdseed, a mistake that many of us make. The pigeons didn't care and gobbled up every crumb.

Occasionally, we see a hawk sailing high overhead or a group of pelicans skimming the water on the bay. Both of these birds are keystone species, as predators that influence their environment.

We notice the absence of birds because we came to enjoy their presence. In the city, we don't hear woodpeckers, another keystone species. At our former home, we regularly heard their rapid tapping as they made holes around the trunk of a birch while they sought insects for a meal. The holes became home for other species as well as a way to keep insect populations in check.

Several weeks ago, I published a post called "Keystones." Since then, I've been working on an illustration for the essay, which will be published this month in Story Circle Network's Substack called True Words from Real Women. But now, I need to figure out a way to add keystone birds to my drawing. October is also Intober, a challenge to do an ink drawing each day of the month.

by Martha Slavin

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Check out the prompts for Inktober and pick up a pen:

https://inktober.com

You can help count the birds in your area. Join Cornell's Feeder Watch:

https://feederwatch.org

END OF SEASON

 

Baseball mosaic by Bill Slavin

The skies were grey with a hint of rain and the change of the seasons. Oracle Park, the Giants baseball stadium, was packed for the last regular baseball game of the year. The young woman, whom we'd begun to call "Sparkly Lady," walked by our seats with her sequin-adorned cap on her way to her perpetual seat behind home plate. The three of us smiled and bumped fists. The Giants had had an up-and-down season, raising fans' hope and crushing them in equal measure.

The last pitch, a strike, ended the last baseball game of the year for the Giants. We all jumped out of our seats for the win. We listened as Tony Bennett sang, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" before we turned to leave the stadium. That was the end of the season. At the beginning of the game, I found myself choked up as a young woman with a guitar sang a simple version of the "Star Spangled Banner," the song that always opens a game, a song that most singers change in some way. In the ballpark, we all came together as one to listen to her clear voice champion the existence of our country, reminding us of simple pleasures that we can all enjoy. Then two jets tore across the sky above our heads, and I shrank down a little. Later, the pilots walked up the same aisle as the "Sparkly Lady" had, and people clapped them on their way to the top of the stands.

I've been a baseball fan since I was a little girl and collected baseball cards of my favorite players. Though we lived in LA, I had cards for Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford, the great Yankee players, as well as a few Dodgers, Don Drysdale, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella. I wasn't tied to either team, but I loved to watch the hitting and fielding that occurred within a game. During the World Series, my whole family was glued to the TV to watch every play. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, I was too young and naive to understand the significance of his actions. He, Willie Mays, and the other players on the teams were just fun to watch to me, but he changed America so that players like Felipe Aleu, Dusty Baker, Ichiro Suzuki, and Shohei Ohtani had an opening to play in major league baseball.

My family played baseball in our backyard, using the maple trees as bases. We practiced our skills (no bunting, for some reason) until we were good enough to hit the ball over the fence into our neighbor's yard, much to my mom's consternation since she and the neighbor were often at odds with each other.

Even in college, I would stop for a week to watch the World Series games, which I thought was better than watching "Dark Shadows," the first Gothic soap opera that caught everyone's attention in the 1960s.

When I married Bill, who grew up playing baseball and played in college, we cheered for both the Giants and the A's. We went to our first game at Candlestick Park, and shivered along with all the other fans until the game was called because of rain. Moving to the east side of the San Francisco Bay, we became Oakland A's fans, and watched Rickey Henderson steal bases, Vita Blue pitch, and thrilled at hits by Jose Conseco and Mark McGuire as the team raced to the playoffs.

We spent many a hot summer at the Oakland Coliseum, whose name changed with each season from UMAX to McAfee to O.co. We called it the Oakland Coliseum regardless of its sponsor. We watched some great baseball and groaned at the owner's penchant for trading away his best players, such as Matt Chapman, Marcus Semien, and Matt Olson. We used to joke that every time we watched a World Series game, we could pick out former A's players on the roster. The one time in 1989 that the A's made the World Series, they played against the Giants. They went on to win the series even though both teams were jolted by the Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated so much of the cities by the bay.

We stayed home during the pandemic and the shortened seasons, but once we were allowed to show up at the ballpark with masks in place, we took our seats at the A's stadium until the owner became so thoughtless of the fans that he moved the team to Las Vegas via Sacramento. We, like many fans, gave away our A's paraphernalia and moved our allegiance to the Giants and a new team in Oakland, the Ballers, who have a B on their caps.

Sitting at the ballpark, watching that last Giants game of the season, reminded me of how much baseball has been a part of my life. The emotions I felt while the "Star Spangled Banner" played brought back those memories of playing the game as a child, and later, of sitting in the stands, first watching Bill play, and then going to various games at stadiums filled with people, decked out in their favorite team's gear. We often choose seats on the opposing team's side so we can watch the action between the hitter, pitcher, and first base. I thought about how easy it was to sit next to a fan who supports the other team. For the most part, we could all sit together, appreciate the skills of a difficult game, while we enjoyed the camaraderie of other fans of baseball, a game, like other sports, that has brought people together.

End of the season by Bill Slavin

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"You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." 

Jane Goodall planted seeds of hope. RIP

EMPATHY

A post of two dogs scrambling in a vet's office to reach the food bowls made me laugh and at the same time feel sympathy for the Labrador who couldn't get its feet under him on the shiny floor and spread-eagled itself and slide into the first food bowl, face-planted in the kibble, and then did the same thing into the next bowl. I laughed as I watched. So often, I see something in the cat and dog videos that flood the internet that brings up two conflicting emotions at the same time. Many of the videos are the natural antics of these two favorite pets, and I smile. Others show people creating a scene for a laugh.

 It's hard for me these days to find something funny. I think that is true of the internet posters. They are trying to create a space where we can also have an amusing moment. Yet, I ask myself, what part of us brings out our enjoyment of watching someone or an animal flounder? On a bigger scale, what part of us wants to save the planet, yet can ignore the struggles of people who live on it? Elon Musk once said that, though he believes that you should care about humanity, empathy is destroying Western civilization. He went on to blame the Democrats for their empathetic actions toward immigrants and to create DOGE, firing thousands of people.

We seem to be living and accepting the cruel world we humans have created. I looked up the definition of compassion, which comes from the Latin word compati, which means to suffer together. On one hand, we can laugh at others and watch passively as families are torn apart. Yet, we are also capable of great compassion. We stand up for people or animals, save them from burning buildings or floods, or provide comfort/food/housing at their loss. We are a group filled with contrasting ideas all at once.

I grew up going to church. In college, I studied the world's religions. The best lessons I learned were three ideas that can be found in the teachings of religions all over the world:

Be Kind

Love One Another

Do to Others What You Would Want Them to Do to You.

Those ideas ring true to me. I don't have to attend church to live by them. I have learned that it is important when I listen to a well-known person that I ask myself if they practice those ideas when they exhort people to follow their lead. Do they aspire to be good? Or do they lean towards their darker side and lack empathy towards others?

"A New World Where Kindness Matters"

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Elon Musk's discussion with Joe Rogan about empathy:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge 

FINDING CALM, FINDING PEACE

What have you done in the last week to ease the fear, the dread, and the anger you may be feeling as a result of the ongoing horrific attacks on one person, young children, or other groups, by, usually, a solitary individual? We don't have a leader who will stand with others and unite us. Instead, we can depend on our communities and ourselves and do two things at once: be active in our push to keep our democracy, whatever that action might be, and also preserve ourselves by finding ways to let go of the heightened emotional responses to tragedies. A friend recently mentioned the creative activities that she and others she knows do - everything from ukulele playing, ballroom dancing, and quiz nights. Each of these pursuits requires creative thinking and, at the same time, brings together people in community.

I am in the process of making a simple book of watercolor shapes and colors after taking a one-day online class with Amy at Mindful Art Studio. I didn't really need the class for the techniques she offered. What I needed was the art community. The work is meditative and easy, and it was fun to see the work generated by a group of people willing to give art a try.

First draft

Second, with dark rectangles covering squiggles

Lettering done with white crayon
on top of watercolor

I am not allowing my critical self to review it. When I paint something I don't like, I change what is on the paper by painting over the section with a rectangular shape. I draw across the shape with a white crayon and add lines of phrases. On another piece of paper, I use a 4-inch-wide cup to make circles. I use a white crayon again to draw small circles, lines, and branches, enclosing them all within the circle. 

A circle is a powerful symbol in many cultures, and to me, it represents a sense of wholeness. It is complete in itself, soothing, calming, like the moon. This last week has been a special week in the sky with the Seven Sisters close to the moon. One of my favorite quotes comes from Bill Waterson:

We can step away from the chaos of the news for a while. We can take a deep breath and concentrate on something close at hand, do something creative without judgment, and then go back to standing strong.

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Two observations from this week:

The San Francisco Main Library posted a flyer for the Silent Book Club, which meets weekly at a local food court. For an hour, participants read whatever book they like. Then, they can proceed to have dinner together or not. They can discuss what they are reading with other participants or not. No one has to read the same book. Meeting to read is another form of meditation, isn't it?

One of the joys of belonging to a calligraphy guild is receiving an envelope or a card that looks like these:

by K. Sevilla

 two versions by K. Charatan

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Robert Reich: The core of our national identity has been the ideals we share: our commitments to the rule of law, to democratic institutions of government, to truth, to tolerance of our differences, to equal political rights, and to equal opportunity.