HILLS AND STAIRS

San Francisco is well-known for its hills. We marvel at the houses that are built on the steep hills and wonder how anyone gets out of a car parked at a ninety-degree angle in front. On one side the passenger would have to push against the momentum of gravity; on the other, the driver would have to keep from falling out the door and rolling down the hill. Honestly.

A friend and I went to the annual SF Decorator Showcase, which featured an elegant Victorian, like so many San Francisco homes, which was built on a slight hill. Before we arrived, we thought good thoughts about finding a parking space. One opened up for us right across the street just as we came to the house -- an unheard of happening. We zipped in and counted ourselves lucky that we didn't have to walk up the hill to the house.. No problem getting out of the car since we were facing downhill and our tires were curbed. We looked across the street at two older women, one with a walker, slowly progressing to the entrance of the event. We wondered if the two could make it up the hill to the house.

Before we entered the house itself, we had to walk up three flights of stairs that brought us above the garage to the front door. We thought of the two women still slowly progressing up the sidewalk and how they would do with the challenging stairs. The designers of each room had reimagined the house and brought out its beauty while retaining the feel of a Victorian. Still, it was four stories tall and each staircase was a feat in itself to climb.

Once we got inside the house, we could see some of the original stained glass windows and also the curved windows in the bay window in the front of the house that looked out to the Golden Gate Bridge. That view was worth the climb up the stairs. It looked out on rooftops to the edge of the Bay and across to the hills beyond the bridge.

I thought of the people who lived in the house when it was first built in 1887, which means it survived the 1906 earthquake. The people must have been in good shape to live in this house with all of its stairs and with no dumbwaiter that I could see to help carry supplies to the kitchen on the first floor. Or they had a lot of help. The thought of the dumbwaiter reminded me of the one we had in our Paris apartment which went all the way from the basement or cave where the inhabitants stored their wine. The apartment had two sets of stairs: one for the servants' entrance that led from the basement to the kitchen and to the garret at the top. The other staircase off the entry wrapped around the tiny, rickety elevator with its folding doors that didn't allow more than two people in at the same time. The stairs were lined with several stained glass windows and broad enough to carry small pieces of furniture. Otherwise, any large pieces came in through the French doors at the front of the apartments. The top floor of the building had rooms originally used by servants, which have become storage or bedrooms for older children when they come home. The windows on that floor looked out on the rooftops of Paris. What a sight.

Geraniums on rue de Lasteyrie

WHAT TO DO WITH MONSTERS

by Martha Slavin

Did you ever imagine that there were monsters under your bed? As a child, did you have that creepy feeling late at night as if a monstrous creature could be lurking near you? I remember listening to our neighbors' rooster crowing in the morning, leaving me with the chilled feeling that something mysterious was going to happen. One afternoon, while our parents went to the market, my sister and I put on the record player Sibelius' "Finlandia", with its sections that sound like ponderous bears rumbling through the woods. The music scared us silly. We ran to our neighbors and waited for our folks to come home. Our imaginations run wild.

Before a meeting at the San Francisco Main Library, I rode the elevator to the 6th floor where the Rare Books Room is located. The sixth floor is a quiet place, perfect as a place to study old maps, rare books, and calligraphy from the Richard Harrison Collection. As I stepped out of the elevator, I found a surprise, an exhibit called "Under the Bed," featuring the work of artists who have written children's books about the monsters we imagine residing under our beds. What a delight for me to look again at the work of Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, William Steig, Graham Wilson, and Japanese artists from the 19th century who protrayed monsters battling with each other.

Libraries represent one of our best places. In smaller towns, they are often of the hubs of the community, places where children can safely come after school hours to study, read, and receive tutoring. My family would make a trip to the library a special event. We all would come home laden with books. My mom, germ-phobe that she was, placed our books out in the sun before we could take them to read. My parents allowed me in elementary school to check out adult history books. My dad and I would talk about those books, which helped me develop my opinions about what I had read. As parents, Bill and I did the same with our son. Librarians have been in the news since groups who wish to ban books and censor what we can read have grown across the country. Librarians, once again, have had to confront new monsters, those people who fear the unknown and think that by banning books they will be able to control our thoughts.

In San Francisco, the main library on Larkin Street offers many opportunities besides finding a quiet place to study. The children's book area is lively when kids are there for story hour. The library has an extensive collection of historical photos of the city. On the ground floor level along with community meeting rooms is an exhibit area, which right now displays the modern photography of Hamburger Eyes magazine. The Robert Grahorn Collection, housed in the Rare Books Room, contains many books about the history of printing, which show the progression of type design from the early days of printing to the modern era.

Two pages from
The Life and Times of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman

We think of books from past centuries as formal, with pages of nothing but type and perhaps an illustration or map at the front, but I had a chance recently to look at one of the first English novels, Tristam Shandy, on display at Letterform Archive, a small gallery, class/workroom, and archive of type and graphic design. The exhibit showed the original version of the book, printed in 1759, as well as numerous copies printed since then into the 20th century, which is when I read a version in college. The latest edition is available through Project Gutenberg, an online library of 75,000 free eBooks, which has digitized the original. The writing is a stream-of-consciousness novel about one character from birth to death and his views of the world. The book is filled not only with pages of print and humor, but Shandy also plays with the pages. He turns a page black to mourn a friend, pastes a marbled paper across another and doodles throughout -- an unexpected precursor to book arts artists like me and an example of how the imagination can devise stories and images of even monsters under the bed.

Japanese woodblock of monster

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https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1079/1079-h/1079-h.htm#:~:text=%26c.—and%20a%20great%20deal%20to,upon%20their%20motions%20and%20activity             

Exhibits at the San Francisco Main Library:

https://sfpl.org/exhibits/2026/03/27/wood-engravers-networks-fifth-triennial-exhibition   

https://sfpl.org/exhibits/2026/04/01/under-bed-monstrous-selections-schmulowitz-collection-wit-humor

https://sfpl.org/exhibits/2026/04/23/continuing-story-life-earth-25-years-hamburger-eyes

calligraphic skills can be learned through the library's program of ebooks found here:

https://sfpl.org/locations/main-library/book-arts-special-collections

https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/display/379727478/2674125947

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Window View April 2026

GOOD READS FOR THESE TIMES

I love a good mystery, even a thriller, but right now, I I'm picking books that are calming, without too much tension, maybe even a little boring, which means they may not always to be found on a recommended list. Normally, part of writing and reading a novel is to experience conflict, danger, or, at least tension that will touch our emotions and keep the reader turning the page. That just seems too much like real life right now. For the same reason, I never watched "The West Wing" because it seemed too close to the news every day and this was before the present administration. I've watched shows from other countries such as Denmark's "Borgen" and Korean historical dramas and though they cover the same kinds of issues as "The West Wing" does, they seem somewhat removed because they are in a different country and in a different language.

Woodblock print on fabric

I moved to New York City right out of college. My first job was as a floater at Mademoiselle Magazine, a magazine now extinct. As a floater, I went from one department to another filling in and trying to find a spot that fit my meager skills. I started in the fabric department and spent time with the Fabric Editor visiting huge manufacturing plants (now extinct) where fabrics were created on cumbersome machines and massive looms. The Fabric Editor's influence created color and design choice trends for the year, though she always pooh-poohed "dumb little florals," a popular design at that time. I then moved downstairs to work in the travel department of Vogue Magazine (Conde Nast owned both magazines) and laughed my way through the often bizarre antics of the super-rich who seemed to spend their time trying to outdo each other.

My last assignment was with the Fiction Editor at Mademoiselle. Sitting right outside of her office, I became her mail guard. I opened all the manuscripts of unsolicited writers hoping to be published. The fiction department made a point of requesting submissions, but most of the time, they published articles from well-known authors or people suggested by agents. I got to read the unsolicited ones, most of which were often more suited to ladies' magazine such as McCalls and Good Housekeeping instead of  fitting the character of Mademoiselle, with its focus on young women with careers. 

I made two piles each day, one of the rejects, and another slim one for the possibles, none of which, while I was working that desk, were ever published. I looked at the stacks of rejects to remind myself of my own submissions when I was very young and the stacks of slips, some of them with kind notes, that came back to me in the mail. From these submissions, I realized that stories need to fit both time and place. Right now, I need something quiet and thoughtful.

Here are my suggestions for quiet books:

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl, the former Gourmet magazine editor. 

Her writing is delicious and revolves around food and the pleasures good food brings. The young woman in the Paris Novel arrives in Paris on a ticket left to her by her frequently absent mother. Because she felt abandoned by her mother while she was growing up, she never took chances and spent her hours concentrating on work. Paris changes her life for the same reasons that so many love Paris.

The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura

For a while, novels about bookshops came fast and furious to my attention. Once I read one, all the online bookstores offered more and more bookshop-titled books for me to read. The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop not only includes a bookshop, but a magical one at that. Aren't all bookshops magicial? Where else besides a library can you walk into a room full of thought?

The bookshop appears when the cherry blossoms bloom and reunites people who have regrets to express to each other. The bookshop, its owner and its cat (what's a bookshop without a cat? Think of Shakespeare and Co in Paris) help heal people's sorrow under the branches of the flowering cherry blossoms.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

Like the other two books, Theo of Golden is not a book that will become a classic, but it is again a story of reconciliation, of dreams, and connections to other people and places. It's the story of an older man who moves to Golden, Georgia, and who buys the portraits that are hanging in a cafe, and reunites the portraits with the people portrayed in them. A good read for right now.

Let Sleeping Cats Lie, Pet Poems by Brian Biltson

Some silly, thoughtful poems about our relationships with our pets.

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BLOG POST Part 2

Little Bumps in the Road, When All Else Fails....

Here I was last week, feeling good, I just posted my 640th blog post last Friday, sailed through the weekend at the ballet and out to dinner with Bill. Life was good, till I received a concerned note from a friend that she hadn't received my blog post. More and more people expressed the same concern. My blog is handled by Blogger, part of Google's vast digital empire, but the subscribers list is run by an online company called Mailchimp. Since I don't monetize my blog, I've used their free service, designed by bloggers like me, with no problems for the last five years. I started to panic when I tried to get information from Mailchimp. I am sure they are a great help for people who use their blogs/websites to make a living. I'm not one of those. Instead, I've used them since they took over from a previous company and I had no other option.

I asked myself: Do I need to switch to Substack finally or set up a website for my blog? How do I contact readers if they don't get my blog posting? Mailchimp does keep track of subscribers' names and email addresses, but I've never wanted to know that information. I just appreciate all of you who read my blog too much to take advantage of you. I could see the coming nightmare of trying to find my way through a digital maze to correct the problem. I discovered that Mailchimp doesn't offer help to free blogs -- oops! maybe I'd been taking advantage of their services for too long? I finally found a way to contact them by pressing their Sales link. I received an email letting me know that they had had a glitch in their system, which they have corrected. I am counting on them posting my blog to my subscribers today.  A conundrum, a riddle wrapped in an enigma, such is dependency on the digital world, which has moved far beyond my skills.