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goings on about town
Hashtag best summer ever continues. We went to the Berkeley Kite Festival, where Alain and I flew a kite in memory of our Dad. Dad made this particular kite for me – it must be nearly forty years old...
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perspective
Alain’s going home next week and this distresses me, so we climbed Mount Tam about it. I love that mountain. It’s a magical island above a sea of Karl the Fog. From up there you can see San Francisco...
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arizona road trip
Meteor Crater. Exactly what it says on the tin. Super impressive. Grand Canyon. The Coconino sandstone at the very bottom of the crater? Is the pale band right at the top of these cliffs....
View Articleand then a month passed
Alain went home. I was sad. Cait and her family visited! It was fun! We didn’t travel for the eclipse because the kids started school that day. So far school seems to be going okay. It turns out that...
View Articlewar mare
I ride Chione, the bright golden Haflinger dressage pony of my heart. I’m holding my arms in a round O now, like first position in ballet, an innovation from the great New Zealand coach Greg Best,...
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what a weird day
Our mayor Ed Lee died very early this morning. He was shopping at the Safeway on Monterey last night when he had a heart attack. The doctors at SF General were unable to save him. He was a complicated,...
View Articlethe horse park in spring
Laura and I have taken a liking to the gallop track. The horses love it. We ride out behind the barn, where this week we interrupted two very young jackrabbits eating their lunch. The meadow in the oak...
View Articleself-medicating with art
The world is on fire, and everything seems to be about death right now, but some things have dealt with death in a way that makes me feel less terrible. Nights are endless because you wake at the...
View Articlecelebrating pride month 20gayteen
Janelle Monáe Angels in America God’s Own Country Nanette Ocean’s 8 (Turns out my sister and I watched Nanette on the same night.)
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long overdue catchup
Goodness, it has been a while, hasn’t it? We had a pretty good summer. We went to Los Angeles and saw the Bladerunner building and a spaceship. We went to Portland and saw some waterfalls. Oz, obvs....
View Articleproposed staycation-jaunts
ETA: success! Art and China after 1989 at SFMoMA Jewels of the Maharajas at the Legion of Honor Never Ending Man at the Roxie Sea Ranch at SFMoMA The World of Charles and Ray Eames at Oakland Museum of...
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watershed
Honestly though this was a devastatingly hard year, politically, professionally, and personally; and it was the fifth such year in a row. Breaking my leg was the least of it. It was too blustery to...
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the green flash
Almost a year after I thought it might, my accidental sabbatical has come to a definitive end. This morning, Laura and I rode Gemini and Bentley around a Horse Park almost violently green from the...
View Articlelucky just to keep afloat
I’ve had the Split Enz song “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” on constant replay this trip. I wasn’t at all surprised to find out Tim Finn wrote it after a nervous breakdown. I complained to Jeremy that...
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keeping a promise to myself
When I was laid lowest with the busted ankle, I promised myself that when I was up and about again, I’d go to Imperial Spa, Zuni Cafe and Yosemite. This was a terrific plan.
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a genuinely fun thing i’ll assuredly do again
The Bringing Back the Natives garden tour in the East Bay. Maidenhair and blue-eyed grass. Some of the gardens tumbled down the sides of canyons, but our favorite was this, around a cottage on a flat...
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by the sea shore
We spent the weekend in Point Reyes, which is so beautiful it almost defies photography. The California Field Atlas describes it as an authentic Pleistocene-era prairie by the sea. Philip K. Dick was...
View Articlean unexpectedly lovely weekend
Yesterday after my riding lesson, Jeremy, Claire and I went out to Devil’s Teeth Bakery for the special breakfast sandwich (scrambled egg, avocado and bacon on a fresh biscuit). On the way back we...
View Articleo happy day
A lazy morning in bed with cups of tea and books and Alice cat, followed by Rebels Within and lattes at Craftsman & Wolves. (Two dogs came in: “Wolves! Truth in advertising.”) To the house, where...
View Articlewell, that escalated quickly
Last Thursday, Jeremy asked what it would take for us to decide to cancel or postpone our planned trip to Australia. On Monday, we rescheduled our flights. Yesterday, the public schools and our kids’...
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adventure time: neighborhood walks
Everyone’s adventures are appropriately downscaled right now, but our neighborhood is a half mile south-east of where it used to be, and we’re exploring fresh walks. We are now only a couple of blocks...
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adventure time: landscaping crew
Because this is San Francisco, a person can rent goats from her local non-profit to clear out her overgrown back garden. Meet Bic, aka White Lightning, a gentle and friendly fellow. Bic’s eyeliner game...
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adventure time: the sea, the sea
It was Dad’s birthday on Saturday so I drove over to see him and Mum. There is beauty even in lost things. Lucky for me!
View Articlemy favorite murder
My garden has been a gift all quarantine. My whole life I’ve hardly enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed Bic, Emma and Precious, the City Grazing goats who took down the worst of the weeds. After...
View Articlethe garden of earthly delights
(As I was thinking about this post and its title, I pulled up Bosch’s altarpiece of the same name and looked at it on my large high res monitor. Did you know that it is a motherfucking masterpiece? I...
View Articlesnapshot
The rains started again in earnest yesterday. We had some good rain in November and my garden is brilliant with sprouts, both the sown and desired native wildflowers and my doughty adversaries,...
View Articlevita nostra, by marina and sergey dyachenko
…paragraphs and exercises, the familiar strain and tiny achievements, the ordinary labor of anyone who desires to learn—all this turned out to be the point of Sasha’s existence.
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vignette
A twenty-minute meeting cancelled at the last moment. I snuck outside into the garden; a guilty pleasure of working from home. We’re having a heat wave and the air is flower-fragrant and full of bees,...
View Articleamerican savannah
Driving home from a fantastic riding lesson with Carrie (Lenny swinging his back and reaching forward into the bridle), I stopped the car by the side of the road to watch a great blue heron standing...
View Articlefarewell to spring
My niece and her excellent husband safely married, we flew home (via shenanigans) to find our little home and our pride of housecats lovingly tended by yarnivore. Driving to the barn last Friday I had...
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smöl bb house wolf
The club leader says “she is just a little bit ugly, which makes her cute.” Which is… not inaccurate.
View Articlegold fame citrus, by claire vaye watkins
camel, horse, mammoth, saber-tooth cat, dire wolf, short-faced bear, coyote, flamingo, pelican, eagle, swan, goose, mallard duck, ruddy duck, canvasback duck, double-crested cormorant, grebe, crane,...
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adventure time: francophilia
Everything went impossibly right. We spent months trying and failing to sort big kid’s passport and didn’t have it in hand until the very hour of our original flight, which we had to rebook at vast...
View Articleseeing with different eyes
We’ve been going to Benjamin Dean lectures on and off since the kids were tiny. It’s pretty cool that our youngest, nigh-adult child now enjoys coming with us. Last month we looked at the Galilean...
View Articleafter golden hour
The city is strange and gorgeous at the dark end of the year. Summer lingers into September, and then on October first, as if someone had flipped a switch, it’s suddenly and irrevocably fall. You...
View Articlea ray of hope, a shining light
It’s golden hour and the last sunlight is drenching the trees around our little treehouse. I just ran to the shops and on the way, had an overwhelming urge to listen to what is maybe the Alan Parsons...
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