Wednesday, July 14, 2021

A BEACHY RAMBLE


As I mentioned in my June 18 BAUMblog, my close ex Jessica, my podmate Elizabeth and I spent two days at the beach in San Francisco. We saw many wonderful things. This was one of them:
Jessica took this photo. These are pelicans. We saw SO MANY pelicans, most much closer than this but not so artistically fabulous. Pelicans seem like relics from the time of dinosaurs. There's something goofy and prehistoric about them. Do you remember when pelicans were threatened with extinction? They ingested DDT pesticide with the
fish they ate, and it made their eggshells too soft. Henry Gibson, a goofy pelican-loving comedian, wrote a heartfelt poem in 1970 about it:

It's not the same without pelicans you know?
I mean dinosaurs... Well they're too big to miss...
And besides, it was their own fault.
But we all grew up with pelicans!
I hope the ducks hold out.
But Henry was WRONG! We got rid of DDT and the pelicans are EVERYWHERE! We saw SO MANY PELICANS flying at the beach. Have you ever seen them plummet into the water when they spy a fish? One moment, they're zooming along and then suddenly they drop like a stone. Very exciting. We didn't see that this time. Pelicans make me happy.

This concrete pier is constantly repainted. First time I've seen it with olde English lettering. Very nice. Not often that you find graffiti in ancient script.


An impressive accomplishment.
Left: A work of art I took home with me.

Right: A delicate necklace of shell fragments, carefully assembled.


Next day, we took a walk on Lands End, the northwest corner of the city.
We encountered a dog almost identical to Elizabeth's Paisley! That was kinda exciting. You don't see identical mutts every day. That's Paisley on the right. Jessica, who lives in Manhattan, has been looking for the perfect dog forever. She confessed to me, after two days of driving around with Paisley in her lap, that she had found her Dream Dog. Sadly, Paisley is already the perfect dog for Elizabeth.

We drove back along 47th Ave. (I think) and encountered an absolutely spectacular environmental installation, with a Star Trek/pirate/whatever motif.

I'm not usually happy to see evidence of smoking, but this cigarette butt seems to indicate that the artists, who created this overwhelming environment, actually use it as a place to sit and relax and have a smoke.

Well done, artists! A true gift to the streets of San Francisco!

Moving on, there were morsels of delight scatter through the neighborhood.

The finest skeleton surfer in flip-flops I've come across lately.

I confess, I would never have the nerve to paint my house like this. But I'm always thrilled to come across someone who does! You know they did EXACTLY what they wanted!





This is the Honey Hive Gallery and Community Center.
While the Doggie Diner is long gone, the Doggie Diner Head remains as the mascot of the Outer Sunset. A group of citizen activists put up a fierce fight to keep the Doggie Head when the actual diner went kaput after many years.


Our last morning, we went out for a final walk on the beach. We discovered the parking lot full of vans and trucks from the the Fire Department. We asked this astonishingly gorgeous mermaid with her wetsuit half off what was going on.
Apparently, every firehouse has a specialty, and the specialty of her firehouse is ocean rescue. They had just finished their monthly practice drill to keep up their skills, and were packing up to head home. Unfortunately, I cannot remember her name. She said they had done an unusually large number of rescues in the past year -- around 250. She loves her work as a firewoman. She is able to work three days straight and spend the rest of the week at home with her kids.

Quite a lovely encounter to cap off our beach adventure.

Well, Bloggelinis: That's it. Just another beachy ramble. The Outer Sunset still has that funky San Francisco vibe. All for now. Terry

 

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Monday, July 12, 2021

CHEER SOMEONE UP!

 

I know, I know -- Nikki is of the canine persuasion, and receiving a bouquet of flowers did not actually cheer him up, as you can see from his skeptical glance at my offering. But he got a cookie for sitting so nicely, and that always lifts his spirits. And I cheered myself up with this silly idea.

"CHEER SOMEONE UP!"
Does that sound like a profound Buddhist teaching to you? Maybe not, but that's what I took away from the dharma talk I listened to the Saturday before last. And it has stayed with me.
The speaker, Norman Fischer is one of my favorite teachers. He's very down-to-earth -- as is fitting for the founder of an organization called Everyday Zen.

Norman titled his talk "What is the body?" I confess that, while I experienced a few moments of enlightenment about my body, it all evaporated as soon as the talk was over. A not uncommon occurrence with me.
BUT what he said when he was DONE with the body business really struck me. He talked about the fact that there are so many huge social issues that we're struggling with right now. It's easy for a conversation with a friend to spiral into a litany of despair. Norman said something like:
"It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. So I hope you all are keeping up your meditation practice, because your practice helps to cheer you up. And YOU need to be cheered up yourself so that you can CHEER OTHER PEOPLE UP!"
Cheer someone up. It's embarrassingly mundane, simple-minded, platitudinous. And yet it opens me to startling images of jumping up and singing and dancing, to disrupt the descent down that spiral of despair.

Or sending amusing postcards.... This is my favorite awake-at-3am-haunted-by-catastrophic-fear activity. I feel that postcards are highly underrated as a means to save the world. A nice picture postcard cheers up the sender when she writes it and the receiver when she.. well... receives it. Not to MENTION all the unknown people along the way who might have read the postcard and been cheered/amused/moved by it.

Cheer someone up, dammit!

I'm not talking about IGNORING the multiple crises we're facing. I should hope you would know that by now. Activism is the true antidote to despair. But perhaps cheering people up is also a form of activism. We KNOW we're in big trouble. We don't need to continually freak ourselves out about it. We need to join with others to take action. AND we need to have a good time whenever possible. THEREFORE, we need to cheer others up, so that we have someone to have a good time with!

&.....We need to celebrate our victories!
Speaking of which, how about .....
THE END OF TAX HAVENS!
All the big countries at the G-20 meeting in Venice have agreed on
a minimum corporate income tax of 15%
to deprive international corporations of the ability to avoid taxes by setting up their headquarters in no- or low-tax countries!
Isn't that just the finest and most improbable thing
that could have happened?!?
The chief financial officers of the biggest countries
deciding to rein in the corporations?!
And why did it happen?
Because Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury
of the United States, made it happen!
And who appointed Janet Yellen?
President Joe Biden.
And who elected Biden?
Millions of us, with an enormous amount of effort.
And why did Biden appoint such an enlightened
& powerful woman as Secretary of the Treasury?
Because our strong progressive movement
has been on his ass since the day he was nominated.
Thank you, Janet Yellen!
&
Congratulations to all the dedicated progressive activists.
DEMOCRACY WORKS IF YOU WORK IT.
or as Winston Churchill said:
"Democracy is the worst form of government –
except for all the others that have been tried."

Dear Bloggelinis:
ARE YOU CHEERED UP YET?
Terry
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Friday, July 9, 2021

Dennis & the Mollie Bus Are Back!

 

I don't own a car. (I don't believe ANYONE should own a car unless they need it for a special reason.) Not only am I car-free, but I live up a rather steep hill. Pulling a cart full of groceries up that hill is not within the realm of possibility. So, before Mollie Stone's on 18th St. started their shuttle several years ago, I had three options:
  1. Borrow a car (but now I've totally stopped driving).
  2. Plan a shopping trip with someone who has a car (not ideal because I don't feel free to take as long as I want).
  3. Take a bus or walk to the store and get a taxi/Lyft home.
Number three is not so terrible. But I loved, before the pandemic, strolling/rolling down the hill to Mollie's, doing a humongous shop....
AND GETTING A RIDE HOME UP THE HILL WITH DENNIS!
Dennis is my friend. I always enjoy our very brief chat, and he has renamed Loulou & Nikki. He always asks, "How are Fifi and Pierre?" When he puts all the bags in the house, they greet him happily -- even though Poodles are not French at all!

Once I was walking home with the pups after a long walk, which didn't include a stop at Mollie's. We got caught in a cloudburst. Clearly we were about to get soaked. That wouldn't have bothered Nikki & Loulou in the least, but it would have been a big drag for ME. Suddenly the Mollie Bus appeared from nowhere, and Dennis offered me and the pups a ride home! It was like magic, like the night bus in Harry Potter! Dennis was my savior.

I am a city girl, and these encounters with the people who work in the neighborhood stores ... I thrive on them. They give me a strong sense of connection to this place called San Francisco.
THE SECOND MOST MISSED THING ABOUT NOT DOING MY OWN GROCERY SHOPPING: Picking my own produce. I and I alone want to be the one who decides if the mushrooms are fresh, if the artichoke looks good, if there's enough kale in the bunch to justify the price. The
head of cabbage has to be HEAVY for its size or forget it! And the Fuji apples with the weird striations are the best ones! The Instacart shoppers seemed to go for size. I wish I could find the photos I took of some of the huge produce they delivered to my door: A jicama as big as my head and a yam the size of a football.

I am so grateful for their service when I was afraid to shop for myself. I don't know how much danger there was in shopping while masked. But at the time, we didn't know the relative danger of anything. The whole WORLD had become a threat. And these shoppers were willing to take the risk for me. I pray that none of them got Covid 19.

Anyhow, I'm DONE with that particular moral dilemma -- I hope forever -- and am absolutely thrilled to now be selecting my own Fujis.




THIRD MOST MISSED THING: Seeing what new products are available. This is America! Everyone is always inventing new food products! And some of them are really good! I'm very happy to have discovered Sriracha Mayonnaise.
FOURTH: I really missed re-using all my plastic bags. I am one of the many who are painfully conscious that plastic is suffocating the planet. One very sad aspect of the pandemic is that we started using so much MORE plastic than before in order to diminish the possibility of contagion. This is one issue that has changed very little as the virus has loosened its hold on us. Everything is STILL in plastic.

Before the virus, I tried to re-use my plastic bags as much as possible. I would bring small bags I'd washed to put the produce in, and big bags to put everything in. I dreamed of getting to the point where I DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH PLASTIC BAGS! Covid 19 changed all that. My shoppers, of necessity, used new bags for everything. It hurt me to watch the bags within bags within bags -- both plastic & paper -- piling up in my flat.
So now I'm back to bringing my small and large bags with me when I do my shopping. It's true, that great day when I don't have enough bags has been pushed far back into the future. But I'm working on the project again, and it feels good.

And when the Mollie Bus FINALLY came back, which was AFTER I'd already gone back to doing my own shopping --- I was SOOOOO happy!

Dear Bloggelinis: Happy grocery shopping from me and Dennis! Terry
Lilith Women's Theater | 547 Douglass St., San Francisco, CA 94114

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Wednesday, July 7, 2021

The Greatest Headline in the History of the Universe!

 

Yes, folks, it cannot be denied:
When an eel climbs a ramp
to eat squid from a clamp,
that's a moray.
(Eel, that is)

It goes without saying that this headline will strike anyone younger than... well, anyone young at all as simply bizarre rather than truly great. To appreciate the sublime silliness of the headline, one must be old enough to remember Dean Martin's immortal hit song, "That's amore" (the "e" pronounced as a long "a" as in "moray") -- the first line of which ran .....

When the moon
hits your eye
like a big pizza pie,
that's amore!
(Love, that is.)


That is a Snowflake MORAY Eel you see in the photos, and a special moment is being captured on video for the first time:
"When a moray hunts, it seizes its prey with the teeth of its outer jaw, and then its pharyngeal jaws leap forward out of the throat and into the mouth to grasp the prey and drag it deeper into the eel's body."
This noteworthy moment was the first time the action of the second pair of jaws was filmed for posterity. We are looking at four stills from said film. I think the lower left photo shows that second jaw in operation.
 
Thus does the science of Moray eels deepen, at the same time as the artistic achievements of headline-writing leap to undreamed-of heights. Why, that anonymous New York Times copy editor has grabbed immortality and swallowed it down as if she had two jaws herself!
 
I do not know the sex of the copy editor, but I always assume people are female unless proven otherwise, to make up for several thousand years of the opposite assumption. I DO know this individual must be of a certain age to have heard "When the moon hits your eye..." etc. yammering on the radio and incessantly inside her head in 1953. Hell, I was only seven years old, and I NEVER forgot the pizza pie in the eye -- which, when you think about it, is much messier image than the ramp with the clamp.

OTHER HEADLINES I HAVE LOVED

When I was living in New York City in the early 1970s, all the hippies, radicals and scruffy artists waited eagerly every Thursday for the Village Voice to arrive on the newsstands. We could not plan our weekend without it. The Voice had a wonderful headline writer. My all-time Village Voice favorite was the headline of a theater review. The play was the famous 18th century Restoration comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer. (Well, it's famous if you were a theater major.)

Apparently this particular production of this delicious farce (with a great resourceful heroine) was not so tasty. In fact, the reviewer found it tedious in the extreme. And that allowed the copy editor to crown the review of She Stoops to Conquer with the headline:
SHE CONKS TO STUPOR.

Now, that's a headline to savor -- She Conks to Stupor -- especially if you're a theater major. That was my all-time favorite headline until I encountered "When an Eel Climbs a Ramp..."

And then this same copy editor (I believe) hit another homer when WBAI Pacifica radio host Steve Post was fired from his teaching job. Steve Post was the most brash and subversive of the WBAI hosts. I remember one marathon funding drive, when all the other hosts were begging listeners to contribute, Post just berated us: "You sit there doing nothing while I work my ass off, and now I'm supposed to beg you to pay me! Forget it!" He went on and on insulting us while the phones were going crazy with donations pouring in.

Anyhow, Steve Post taught part-time at a college on Long Island named in honor of C.W. Post. Old C.W. made his fortune inventing breakfast cereals. He is the father of Post Toasties. Perhaps Steve had stepped on a few too many Post Toasty toes and, as a result, was told to pack his bags.

Now, this is a copy editor who saw the potential for headline glory in a review of a boring production of a Restoration comedy. How could she possibly fail to notice the obvious opportunity offered by the firing of subversive Steve?

Thus...

POST LOSES POST POST.

.... blossomed in the Village Voice one day in the early 70s. You don't forget a headline like that. Nevertheless, it has now been demoted to third place in my headline hierarchy.

What do these three headlines have in common? The copy editors, in their brilliance, saw rare opportunities and grabbed them. And in so doing, they've given me (and perhaps you) and will continue to give me (and perhaps you) many moments of internal giggling. Ramp clamp eye pie moray amore... Only a genius could have put it all together.

Dear Bloggelinis: You may have noticed I have not yet returned to grappling with the world. I have been feeling all grappled out. Perhaps you too? But the grappling is still needed, so I'm gradually returning to my Blogmistress ways. Perhaps soon I will write something deep and insightful. Terry
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