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