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.

***************

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."

***************

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/

***************

****************

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.

***************

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