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LISA HOUSTON, WRITER

My Earthquake Memory: Snapshot of an Era

10/18/2019

 
PictureA House in the Marina District
​At 5:04 p.m. on October 17th, 1989, I was at work, standing in the center of a bookstore called A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. The name was a quote from Hemingway, but that didn’t stop customers from correcting the grammar almost daily. “It should be a clean well litplace for books,” they would say with a disapproving smirk as I rang up their purchases at the cash register. Six years before Amazon began its selling books online, and well before internet omnipresence, being a bookstore clerk made me a kind of semi-deity. Someone who could open the gi-normous tomb ofBooks in Printand leaf through its onion skin pages to obtain information on a precious, hard to find volume. I loved that job. My coworkers were smart and funny, but with a veneer of cynicism that was only a pose, overlain atop a sweet vulnerability. Or perhaps I only saw it that way. I was a newlywed. Late that August I’d said my vows. I was also a budding opera singer working a stone’s throw from the greatest opera house in the world. I’d say I was rather aglow with love in all directions. 

PictureThe Bay Bridge
​When the quake came our customers did something astounding. They ran out of the store, straight into the traffic of Van Ness Avenue. Cars came skidding to a stop and people jumped back onto the sidewalk in relief and embarrassment. Perhaps they didn’t know that we stood on bedrock, a pretty good place to be at a time of seismic catastrophe. And they probably did not know that the owners of the store, in their infinite wisdom, had built all the shelves at a slight declining angle into the wall. When the shaking stopped, not a single book had fallen.
            
I don’t remember if we closed or if I finished out my shift, but about an hour after the quake I headed home, walking along Van Ness in the growing dusk. This was the days before cell phones, and the chatter among people was constant, and rife with rumors and hubbub. The bridge collapsedwas something I heard and discounted. It was not possible, or so I thought. A few blocks west, a man with a shopping cart full of his possessions had a transistor radio, and a couple of people were huddled around it, listening to the news. A man in an expensive suit. A woman with a small child. I joined them. We listened together for some time. KGO, as always, was the voice of reason, calm, and solid information. Yes, in fact, part of the bridge had fallen. It was a strange, but quite beautiful moment of community, the cluster of us.
            
I stepped away and continued up Van Ness. It was now almost dark, but many of the lights were out so it was darker than San Francisco usually is at that hour. The adrenalin began to be reabsorbed into my body as I walked faster. My brow furrowed against the strangely warm air as I began to realize this was much more than a hiccup. My ignorance swept over me. My husband was at a baseball game. The World Series. He, my brother, and my brother-in-law were all there. They’d been thrilled to go, even though the seats were fairly high up in the stands. I pictured the rough old concrete of Candlestick Park which seemed to wobble even in a stiff wind. Would it survive? 
​
The rest of my walk was a worried blur. I arrived home at our apartment on Clay Street between Larkin and Hyde. I went straight in and found our cat, Boomer, scared out of his wits, but just fine. A bookshelf had emptied but the apartment looked fine otherwise. I called my sister in the east bay. She was seven months pregnant, and fine. Mom was fine. Dad was fine. Everybody was fine. She and I speculated about what our husbands would do. She said news was coming in of traffic ground to a halt because of a collapse of the Nimitz freeway. The casualties would turn out to be in the dozens. I thought, I hoped, my husband, brother, and brother-in-law would make their way to me, but how would they get here? Were the busses running? I grabbed a pack of cigarettes – yes, opera singers smoke sometimes, especially when there are earthquakes – and headed down to the street, where I smoked and chatted with my neighbors.
            
After several hours my husband arrived home. I will never forget the look on my brother-in-law’s face before I had the chance to tell him that my sister, his wife, was fine. It is the only time I have ever seen him scared. 
            
I tried to convince my brother and brother-in-law to stay with us. The world seemed a scary place and I was glad to have them back in my circle. But they decided to make their way across the Bay.

PictureThe Cypress Freeway after Collapse
The power was out in our little apartment, and would stay out for days due to damaged substations. That part of San Francisco is just at the bottom of the ritzy Nob Hill, but truly it is closer to the Tenderloin, which is why it is jokingly called “the Tender Nob.” Feathers were ruffled over the coming days as power went back on in the wealthier neighborhoods first, but we waited, and waited. The Tenderloin’s power came on last. 
Eventually I went back to work. Those days I had the duty of ordering the books for opera and music section, an honor I abused terribly, ordering every book I was interested in until finally they took the assignment from me. That era was a pinnacle of glory for the opera. The season before I had heard La Bohème with none other than Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni, a performance so convincing and impeccable it caused me never again to lament casting grand sized opera singers in the role of young lovers. A month before the quake I had seen the great Jessye Norman in recital, and the season had opened with a sexy, smashing Luluand Sam Ramey at the peak of his voice as Mefistofeles. In general the San Francisco Opera in late eighties offered a series of performances I feel proud and lucky to have beheld, very often grabbing a sandwich after work at the bookstore, and spending the evening leaning on the rail behind the orchestra section flanked by my fellow standees. 

The performance scheduled for the night of the Quake was cancelled. Subsequent performances took place at the Masonic Auditorium and later the Civic Center as a substantial repairs and seismic retrofit were performed on the War Memorial Opera House, a place many in the city and music-loving community of the Bay Area consider almost a person, at least a friend. But opera fans put up with the inconvenice, and the cavernous acoustics elsewhere. Even later, back at the opera house, most of us took a moment before the curtain rose to look up at the tight meshed net that seemed to defy the gravity of the crumbled ceiling. But like the city in 1906, San Francisco Opera showed itself to be the comeback King. 
​
The actual tragedies touched me only peripherally. When I went to my Italian lesson the day after the Quake, my teacher was in tears. His friend had been one of those who died in the Marina, a neighborhood built on landfill that had fared quite poorly. A good friend from high school had exited the Nimitz freeway less than a minute before it collapsed. But the worst had been spared to those closest to me and I felt that mixture of relief and guilt common to all survivors. 
            
Two years later, when a firestorm engulfed the Oakland Hills, I was living on the East Coast. At first I paid small attention to the news of “a fire in California.” It’s a big state, it could’ve been anywhere. Then I realized it was directly above my parents’ home and I watched the news in horror. In the end, my parents’ home was just below the evacuation line, and though my brother had hosed down the roof and they had stood and watched the hillside burn, they were safe, as was the grand lady of the Claremont Hotel, a landmark most of us East Bay natives consider iconic.
            
Since then, disaster has become more common, and more personal. Two years ago, in the weeks following fires here, we suffered a noxious and oppressive air quality for days, and shortly following that my cousin, young, healthy, and in his early forties, died suddenly of a heart problem. He was not technically a victim of the fire, but in my mind the events are forever linked. And I have two friends who lost everything to fire, or rather almost everything. They left with the clothes on their back, and their dogs. Their strength in the aftermath has amazed me. I don’t pity them, because I have seen them triumph.
            
The months following the Quake, the book Fifteen Seconds positively flew off the shelf in the bookstore. A hastily published paperback coffee table book, it encapsulated the worst events of the Quake, and it was one of those times in the bookstore trade that one book absolutely took over a section of the industry. When that book came out, I’d say all of San Francisco wanted a copy. And I can understand why. The mind needs help after an event like that. It seems almost unreal. Looking at those pictures, of fallen buildings, of people gathered, it lets you know, yes, this happened. But unlike the scrolling infinity of misery we all see every day on our phones, that book was finite. A frightening, tragic encapsulation that you could pick up when you needed to consider what had happened, but was also comforting because you could finish it, and put it down.
            
CNN was founded in 1980, so it was up and running for the evens of ’89, and ’91. But the world’s population had not yet jumped aboard the 24/7 news cycle, nor did we all have cell phones, creating our own, more intimate version of 24/7. So there was a way in which these catastrophes trickled in, just as I waited in the darkened apartment for news of my husband, families waited, communities waited, cities waited. And it was in that window of not knowing that barriers came down. The number of homeless individuals in San Francisco has reached huge proportions lately, but it is far from a new problem. And people interact with each other in different ways about that. Some stop, to offer solace, or money. And sometimes a person asks for money. But when was the last time you stopped a homeless person to ask for a favor? In that moment on Van Ness, the man with the shopping cart was our lifeline for a few moments, and in those few moments our “status”, if you will, was reversed. That, I think, is the great gift of these catastrophes. Things that are artificial, or unimportant, disappear. 

​My family is different now, since we lost our cousin. And even these larger catastrophic events, (among which many of my friends and family include a frightening and tyrannical presidency,) these things have the ability to shake us out of our routines, to make us feel an existential human fear, not only for ourselves, but for our loved ones. I will never forget that look on my brother-in-law’s face. At least I hope I never will. Because it reminds me of the truth: we are all of us hanging by the thinnest of threads. Once we know that, or remember it, the only option is to be as kind and as helpful as we possibly can.

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Ceiling of the War Memorial Opera House

I Remember Shopping

5/10/2019

 
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Helen Frank, "Fitting Room at Lehmann's" used by permission of Lafayette College, see citation below*
PictureMaryann Magnin, photo used with permission from the American Jewish Historical Society
                                                                                       
​                                                                             For Carol


Travel with me back in time. It’s 1976. A Saturday morning, early. I’m in the back seat of a Ford Country Squire Station Wagon that has a wood-paneled exterior and more steel than a fleet of Priuses. Mom is at the wheel. Riding shotgun is my older sister. At sixteen, she is the most glamorous person I know. I’m in the backseat, leaning forward so I can arrive just a split second sooner.

We’re going to the City. Better than that, we’re going to Magnin’s.
 
To say that I. Magnin and Company represents old California would be an understatement. In 1876 Dutch-born Maryann Magnin, the daughter of a rabbi, immigrated to Oakland and began selling high-end baby clothes. The “I” was for Isaac, her husband. As the business expanded, the locations improved. The building we’re headed to is on Union Square. Ten stories of white marble built in 1948, a time when the department store stood as a gleaming palace on the hill of the American psyche, a repository for postwar plenty and a conduit for the magic of modernity. It was a time when families all over the country loaded themselves into big cars like ours and sailed downtown to buy a belt, a sofa, or a set of tools. For people in the Bay Area, it was Sears. The Emporium. Capwell’s. Bullock’s.
 
For the women of my family, the biannual sales at I. Magnin’s were a pilgrimage of the highest order, for the lowest prices. A time to claim our rightful inheritances as Queens of Frugality. Unlike today, when this season’s clothes disappear magically from store shelves, making their way to secondary retail houses like Ross, or TJ Maxx, in those days many stores cleared their own inventory, creating deep-cut annual sales like the one at Magnin’s, or places like Capwell’s Basement, with its large tables piled high in pants, bras, dresses. Tables you could stand at for hours, moving your arms through the clothing like a gold miner, elbow-deep in the river, searching for treasure. 
 
Arriving in the City for the Magnin’s sale, we thread the long body of the Country Squire around the tight spiral ramps of the newly expanded parking garage at Sutter and Stockton, and then walk through Union Square, heads held high as we march right past Macy’s (and it’s full retail prices.) 
 
Arriving at Magnin’s, we grasp the ornate brass door handles, still cold to the touch from the San Francisco fog, and step inside, immediately enveloped by a sense of richness. The large, two-story room glows from Lalique light fixtures hanging in a golden ceiling. Powdery floral breezes waft over towards us from the cosmetics in the Mural Room with its stained glass by French artist Max Ingrand,whose work can be seen in other obscure places, like Notre Dame. Not to be distracted, we head straight to the elevators, Mom setting a fast pace as if leading us into battle, and up we go, our stomachs doing a little flip as we ascend, anticipating the glorious things we will find.
 
I am about to sound like an old lady, but I don’t think I own one piece of clothing today that is as well-made as the things we used to buy at Magnin’s. Wool skirts with real linings, pants and shirts that lasted for years, and years. And the prices were astonishing, so we bought plenty. Walking back to the car, our arms grow longer from carrying heavy bags, and again we walk quickly, like bank robbers, hurrying from the scene of the crime.
 
Loehmann’s was another Mecca for us. In 1921, Frieda Loehmann put her knowledge as a department store buyer to use, acquiring the season’s designer overstock for a pittance and selling it at a bargain. The idea took off and Loehmann’s became a chain. (And a concept, later copied by many.) Mom had grown up going to Loehmann’s in New York, so when my sister and I went with her and Grandma, it was a tradition continued, a touch of old New York right there in the East Bay. One time I snapped a picture as Mom and Grandma walked in. I wanted to capture that moment, their backs slightly hunched as they lurched forward, purses clasped tightly under their arms. I felt I was witnessing a vestige of ghetto life, a time when Jews had to be savvy, to scrounge and forage to survive. There’s nothing to match the focus and intensity of mothers and daughters on a trip to Loehmann’s. When I was sixteen I read Lauren Bacall’s autobiography, and she described just such a scene with her mother at the original Loehmann’s, in a former auto showroom in Brooklyn. And that’s how I felt. When I went to Loehmann’s, I was connected to a great lineage of women in pursuit of fashion. I was a New Yorker. I was Lauren Bacall.
 
Loehmann’s had much to recommend it, with its tantalizing, slightly illicit-sounding “Back Room” for designer fashion. But my favorite thing about Loehmann’s was the communal dressing room. Mirrors all around, no limit to the number of items you could bring in, beyond what you could manage to carry in your arms. Everybody half-naked, and free to comment on anything they liked. “You’re not getting that? I’ll try it!” someone would say, grabbing my reject from the rack in the middle of the large space. “What a figure!” the old lady next to mom might say, pointing to me, and I would blush as the other women nodded, feeling like I had a dozen kind grandmas. I’m not alone. Loehmann’s dressing room is immortalized in an etching with hand coloring by artist Helen Frank. And Erma Bombeck, a humorist I used to think was corny, but now seems increasingly wise, once titled one of her books, “All I Learned About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room.”
 
Of course, shopping wasn’t just about clothes. On most every Saturday morning my siblings and I woke to the blaring horn of the station wagon, signaling us to get out of bed and come unload the haul of goods (and not-so-goods) mom had acquired in her garage sale-ing. But sometimes Mom paid full price. When Mom and Dad had a party, we always made a trip to the Genoa delicatessen in Oakland, back when it was a postage stamp-sized shop where we would crowd in shoulder-to-shoulder and pick a number. Mom would buy sliced salami, and ravioli. 
 
For Dad, a love of shopping was all about books. Once, during the turbulent sixties, Dad was browsing at a bookstore on Telegraph Avenue while the rest of us were waiting in the car. Mom, me, my brother, and my sister. Waiting. And waiting. It was one of those times as a kid when life gets very vivid all of a sudden. Mom was fuming. I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. Suddenly there was a huge crash above us. Someone had thrown a gigantic pumpkin from an apartment above, and it landed square on the roof of our car. Perhaps our station wagon was a symbol of the bourgeoiserie, and they were making a statement. Perhaps they were on LSD, and thought the pumpkin was a bomb that needed to be gotten rid of. Either way it was the last straw for Mom. With three frightened children, the wet flesh of the pumpkin-goo pouring down the windows around us, she ordered my big sister to go in and get Dad, which she did, dragging him away from the books like an alcoholic from the bar.
 
Telegraph Avenue is different these days. The flagship of revolutionary cafés, Café Mediterranean, also known as “the Med”, is recently closed. Meanwhile, the Genoa has one location left, not the original. Loehmann’s went bankrupt. I didn’t know it at the time, but even before they moved into the “White Marble Palace”, as Christian Dior called it, I. Magnin’s had been sold to the Bullock’s chain, and by the time I was shopping there the two had merged to become “Federated Department Stores.” Later the Magnin’s and Bullock’s brands were bought out by Macy’s, before disappearing entirely after a “realignment.” Until recently, though, one could still use the sixth floor restroom. Made of green marble, fit for royalty, it had become part of Macy’s. But the building recently changed hands again, so that, too, is ended.
 
And so it goes.
 
These days my shopping patterns are varied. I have my favorite local shops, many of which seem to close too soon, but I’ll admit to ordering frequently online, and shopping at large discount stores. I’d like to say that every time I do, I wonder what beloved local business I am helping to kill, but I don’t. That would be too exhausting. Mostly, I appreciate the time and money saved. 
 
Still, I think about it. Where that bookstore on Telegraph stood, just a few doors down from the old Café Med, is a gleaming new café. It has tall windows and stark black tables that no one will ever carve their names into, and around which no revolutions will be planned. I drive by one evening and see the students, each illuminated in the solitary glow of their laptops. I feel the urge to stop. To go in and tell them that this once was a bookstore, and that someone smashed a pumpkin on the roof of our car. I want to tell them about Loehmann’s, and Magnin’s, and the Genoa, too. I want to ask them, and myself, and all of us, what are we doing?
 
Fortunately, Magnin’s lives on in other ways. The company grew deep roots in California, and San Francisco in particular. Joseph, one of Maryann and Isaac’s eight children, founded his own clothing company, which was run by his son, Cyril Magnin, and Cyril’s philanthropy is legendary in the City. He helped to establish the Asian Art Museum, American Conservatory Theater, and was a staunch supporter of the opera and other artistic institutions, earning him the moniker “Mr. San Francisco” from none other than Herb Caen, the beloved columnist who would’ve been well within his rights to claim the title for himself.
 
You can never go home again, so they say. But I miss Herb Caen. And I miss those sales at Magnin’s. The rest of the year Magnin’s belonged to socialites and wealth-mongers, the crème de la crème. But twice a year, it was ours. 
 
It’s hard to put your finger on what’s missing from shopping these days. But I guess for me it’s the ride home. Mom is at the wheel. My sister still gets the front seat, and I’m in the back. But now I’m not leaning forward. I’m resting deeply into that giant Country Squire seat, lightheaded, and exhausted, surrounded by bags. Classy bags made of thick, stiff paper, with silk rope handles and embossed lettering that reads, “I. Magnin and Co.”

P.S. In researching this article, I found my way to various I. Magnin images and memorabilia, one of which was the dress below, which I bought on Ebay. What a steal!
​
*Helen Frank print used by permission of Lafayette College,
 Helen Frank Master Print Collection, 1949-2014. Special Collections & College Archives, David Bishop Skillman Library, Lafayette College. Special thanks to Elaine Stober, college archivist, and also to Melanie Meyers, Director of Collections at the American Jewish Historical Society for allowing the use of the picture of Mrs. Magnin.

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GREG'S PLATTER

6/14/2018

 
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I don’t know about you, but I was pretty self-centered in my twenties. Adulthood was just getting started, I had things to do, places to go. At least compared with how I feel now, I didn’t have too much imagination about how others really felt.

​And even now, I’m guilty of taking people for granted, loving them, but not always taking time to really appreciate them. I think I’m actually better at loving dogs than I am loving people. At least, I seem to have a more accurate sense of what they need and want, and also seem to have an almost infinite supply of patience and love when it comes to my four footed friends. So when my beautiful German Shepherd passed away suddenly, three months ago, I was devastated, of course. But I knew that I had filled her life to the brim with happy dog days. She played, she frolicked, she ate treats, she got belly rubs. All the time. Every day. And that’s a comfort to me, now that she’s gone.
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I can’t exactly say the same for the sudden loss of my cousin, Greg, this past October. Of course I loved him, of course I thought about what a great guy he was, and was always thrilled to see him and catch up. But it wasn’t until he was gone that I really began to appreciate who he was. A lot of that came from seeing him through the broader lens of the love of his family and friends. His coworkers, his Hootenanny partners, his fellow Ducks fans. In some ways, it wasn’t only that I got more information about Greg, more data, but that because of the loss, I took the time (or the time took me) to reflect more deeply. 
​
One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot since October, is Greg’s platter. 

I’d say we give pretty nice Christmas gifts in our family. But except for the kids, we mostly try to keep it modest. Scarves and best sellers, a big box of juice oranges. Those are pretty much the norm. And then one Christmas, about twenty years ago, there was the platter. 
         
Greg handed me a heavy package, and I couldn’t imagine what it was. When I opened it, I was somewhat stunned at what a special, lovely gift he had given me. I don’t remember what I said when I unwrapped it. But I do remember what Greg said. He said that he had been at a crafts fair, and when he saw it, he immediately thought of me, and how creative I was.

“I just thought you would like it,” he said. 

He was right. I like it.

And I’ve liked it for twenty years. For a while I kept onions on it, then it was for my snacks hodgepodge. When I did a photo shoot for a column on veganism, I dusted it off and loaded it with pretty vegetables.
And other times it was tucked away in a cabinet. But it’s always been there. And so has the memory of Greg’s attention, which is the greatest gift someone has to give, and one Greg gave of generously. On the annual Thanksgiving walk one year, I told him the whole convoluted plot of my first, deeply flawed novel. “Sounds cool!” he said with that smile of his. “I can’t wait to read it.” 

The loss left by Greg’s parting is commensurate with the magnitude of his spirit. Which is to say, it’s huge. And there’s no right way to deal with loss. I know I’ve reveled in the many pictures of him, and I’m glad his parents are organizing a project for more pictures, and more memories to flow. 

I just moved from a rather large upstairs unit of my house, into the quite small in-law apartment, so I did a considerable amount of downsizing. In imagining the new space, I knew I wanted a big picture of my German shepherd. I even paid to have it matted and framed. I love how she is here with me, standing guard, watching over me while I do the dishes.

​Pictures help. Memories help.

The hardest thing about moving is sorting through stuff, and figuring out what is important, and what isn't. Asking, “What really matters?” Greg’s passing has inspired that reflection as well, in spades. 

But back to the Christmas memory. Just imagine, really imagine, the mind of busy guy in his early twenties, springing for a quality gift like that for his cousin. How great a guy is that? 

Greg’s entire life was made up of thousands of instances of generosity like that. He was the embodiment of the idea that it only takes a moment to really consider other people, and only another moment to show that appreciation.

A lifetime of such moments strung together, becomes a lifetime of love.

I got rid of a lot of books, clothes, cluttery things I never really needed, or was hanging on to for the wrong reasons. They say when space is limited in the kitchen, try to have things that do more than one thing. No ice crushers or melon ballers. But rest assured, Greg’s platter made the cut, and stands in a place of pride in my new, downstairs home. I think I’ll put avocados on it, or bananas. But maybe I will use it for other things, too. For marbles, or pinecones. Who knows? After all, I’m a very creative person.

​I know that, because Greg Walsh told me so. 

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Your Christmas Without: Dealing with loss over the holidays

12/23/2017

 
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Many people have a tradition this time of year to make a gratitude list. Around Thanksgiving and into the winter holidays, people reflect, and consider all they have to be grateful for. And this is a wonderful practice. I, like many, even went through a period when I kept a daily gratitude journal, jotting down what I was most grateful for every night before bed.
           
But this time of year also has a way of reminding us of winters past, and marking clearly in our minds what we have lost. Some people are facing their first holidays without a loved one who has died. Others must confront their first holiday after losing their houses to wildfires or natural disaster. Or their first holiday being divorced, broken-up, unemployed, ill, or alone. For many of us, among the losses this year has been the loss of a faith in government, or even a confidence in fundamental public decency. News from many parts of the world is deeply troubling, and for some a sense of certainty or hope has been lost. For many, it has been a rough, painful year.

In this season of list making, I bristle a bit at the idea that a “best of” list has more value than a “worst of” list. More and more as life takes its toll, my idea of optimism is not to “focus on the positive”, but to love, as Zorba the Greek said, “the full catastrophe.”
           
I think there is a way of looking at loss that can have almost the same result as a gratitude list. It’s a different route to the same destination. Here’s what I mean.
One New Year’s Eve, I was performing in a musical show. Sitting in the dressing room as we applied our make-up, the actress next to me said, “I can’t wait for it to be next year.”
           
“Why?” I asked.
           
“Because,” she said, studying herself in the glass, “next year will not be the year I got divorced.”
           
Some events are so challenging, they come to define us. There was before, and after, and we are forever changed. And sometimes, as the year wraps up, we feel as if we will drown in the choppy waves of that change. As with my stage colleague, we may not deny the fact of a horrible event, but we  are ready to let go of who we were in the face of it. And there is truth in that. Whatever recovery is yet to come, whatever new trials and tribulations next year will bring, it will not be the year _________ happened.

Sometimes, when tragedy strikes, you have to take it head on, and say look at that horrible, horrible thing that happened. You can’t not dwell on the horribleness of it. It was so, so, horrible, wasn’t it? And in that way, looking at loss can force you to come face to face with something no gratitude list can give you: a realization of your own strength. Because the more horrible the loss, the more strength you summoned. Your losses may have been horrible this year, unthinkable even. But if you’re reading this, you survived them. Yes, you did. And as we say in the theatre, bravo!
           
This holiday won’t be the same as other years. It just won’t. Will it be happy? Sad? Tiring? Confusing, miraculous, or gratifying? All or none of the above?

I suppose none of us knows.


Whatever it will be, and whatever losses you are facing, I wish you well, for your first holiday without _____________.
           
                                                                    Love,
                                                                          Lisa


Written in loving memory of my cousin, Greg Walsh,
​ and my friend, Frank Poletti. 
​This was the year we lost them.
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TV Likes and Not So Much...

8/1/2017

 
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Just a quickie here, starting with some TV Stuff I’m tired of:
 
Opera playing in the background of the villain’s scene. Opera fans, in my experience, are not always serial killers and sociopaths. Sometimes, but not always. 
 
Women in power portrayed as emotionless bordering on cruel. I.e. the Dragon Lady.


The use of children as victims because it isn’t p.c. any more to constantly portray women being victimized, but kids can’t speak up to protest their portrayal, so that makes it OK. NOT!

TV Stuff I’m loving:
 
Increased use of landscapes and vistas in murder mysteries, shamelessly pilfered from Scandanavian shows but welcome nonetheless. The beauty of nature helps contrast and give time to process the violence of the story.
 
The celebration/normalization of weird. Because I’m a freak, you’re a freak, and we’re all just freak, freak, freaky. Yay.
 
The ability to binge. This is the Easter Play come full circle. One must pause only to get food, walk the dog, or go use the pissing pot. This is how we are meant to absorb stories. To dive in and let them wash over us. To read them by the fireside as the days pass away. To marvel at them, ponder them, and shout out when they finish: AGAIN!

Happy Watching.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thoughts and Photos for Mom: Happy Women's Day!

3/8/2017

 
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PictureMom and Me on her 80th Birthday in 2014
Today I’m looking forward to the Women’s Day celebrations, and I’m also honoring my mother.
            Last week I attended an event to celebrate Mom. The California Women Lawyers association was giving her an award. Named for trailblazer Rose Bird, who was not only the first female justice on the California Supreme Court, but the first female Chief Justice on the California Supreme Court. But beyond that, Bird was a woman of exceptional courage and principle. She opposed the death penalty, and overturned 56 death penalty sentences before she was voted out of office after a highly publicized campaign against her. And in a case we might be hearing more about as states continue their efforts to curtail the right to abortion, she ruled that poor women should be provided with free abortions.
            Mom was thrilled to be receiving an award named for this woman.
            It was a nice event, with a buffet dinner and a medium-sized room packed with about a hundred lawyers and Judges. My niece, who will be 14 in a month, was all dressed up and wanted to circulate in the crowd by herself. I loved watching this, and can’t help but think it had something to do with the fact that it was a very pro-female room.
            Mom’s acceptance speech included profound thanks to her clerk and bailiff, and the social workers she deals with daily, but also a rousing cry of outrage at the decimation of the judicial system, the budget cuts that make it more difficult to dispense justice, and the new administration’s cutting of the a legal services corporation for the poor. And as she spoke, I watched the faces of the women lawyers, many of them about my age, mid-life and working hard to do their thing. And I saw how much Mom meant to them. How they had watched her for years, and been influenced by a woman doing her job with grace and authority.
            Mom’s been a trailblazer in her own way, working hard to support drug recovery as an option to prison, and for the past ten years helping to establish a mental health court so that people receive treatment instead of jail. And I could tell it was meaningful to these women, what Mom had done.
            Mom didn’t have examples like that. Mom went to Harvard Law School in the 50’s, applying to the Law School because her first choice, the Harvard Business School didn’t accept women. (But it does now! Here's a picture of m
y cousin Kathleen, Mom’s niece, graduating from Harvard Business School in 2014.)

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There were nine women in Mom's class at Harvard Law in the fall of 1956, one of whom was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And when the dean welcomed them, he told these women: “You know, you’re taking up a space that should be filled by a man.”

​Even having heard the story all these years, I still find it hard to imagine such a thing.

So here she is now in 2017, 82 years old, happily married to Dad for 58 years, three grown children, four grandchildren, still serving on the Alameda County Superior Court, working with young public defenders, prosecutors, and social workers, trying to be fair and just and reasonable and kind to the people who come before her, both the “clients” as they call them, and the attorneys. California’s newest Senator, Kamala Harris, (who’s rockin’ the resistance in the Senate by the way,) Kamala served as a District Attorney in Alameda County for eight years, and argued in front of Mom, as did so many women who’ve gone on to do great things. And I think it’s been good for the men, too, to see a woman Judge who’s fair, diligent, and capable. And Mom’s all of those things.

So Happy Woman’s Day. I’ll probably go down to a midday rally later, to enjoy the activism that is inspiring our nation right now. But the real celebration is going on in my heart, as I give thanks for the greatest blessing a woman can have, an inspiring mother. 


Thanks Mom.
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P.S. Mom's grandmother was born in Lithuania in the 1880's. Her family left there the year she was born, fleeing the persecution of Jews that was so rampant in Eastern Europe at the time. I had the chance to go to Lithuania to sing a few years ago, and one of my concerts took place at a Jewish museum. This is a photo of me taken next to a painting there. Is this woman one of my lost grandmothers?
 

This Land IS Your Land! (photo slideshow)

2/23/2017

 
I took these photos at the San Francisco Airport protest on January 29, 2017. Like protests at airports across the country, this one was peaceful, and spontaneous. A heartfelt response from thousands of people who were offended and distressed at the new president’s ban on travelers for seven mostly Muslim nations.
 
This slide show seemed like a good way to honor Woodie Guthrie, who on this day, February 23rd, in 1940, wrote the lyrics to his wonderful song, “This Land Is Your Land.”
 
And it is.

Creativity, an Exposé

2/17/2017

 
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Looping and strange, that’s how I’d describe creativity.
 
Looping because it isn’t linear, though bursts of it arrive straight out of nowhere, and produce something, start to finish. But looping means its always moving towards you or away from you, and that you can always catch the thread of it, or hop on the next time around.
 
Strange because, well, it isn’t “regular” or “normal”, even though it is utterly common and every human has experienced it. But it has an oddness, a peculiarity. A weird sparkle, which produces a reciprocating shimmer in its audiences. It's contagious.
 
Back to that hopping on next time around business. Just like sometimes you have to get on the wrong bus because it’s the only one running at that hour, and later you can transfer to the one you really want, sometimes with creativity you need to be a bit less particular. If your grand scheme has been thwarted, or has come to a disappointing, premature stop, you just hop on whatever’s running –a poem, a dance, a garden- and you ride that one a while. You’ll see, you’ll get where you’re going.
 
Creativity is the enemy to some. Some who weren’t allowed, or who were made fun of. Kids told not to sing, or who watched other, more openly creative types called “freaks” or no-good, jobless hippies. You can understand their caution. And all of us fall prey to those oppressions of the mind. Those ferocious insinuations that we should be doing something “real.”
 
Art is real. Craft is real. Creation is real.
 
But our connection to it can be evanescent. Tenuous. Short-lived. Fickle. Succumbing to an inflated vanishing whimsy or a diabolical internal persecution. Because The Creativity Killer lurks around corners and in alleyways waiting for all of us. Even those born in the land of the flower children. (Secret Encoded Message: the Killer is called Judgment.)
 
That’s why the first grab at the thread must be done gently, and maybe with a bit of stealth. Simply reach out slowly, and take the nearest loose end. Then, using a light squeeze between thumb and forefinger, ever so amiably, just give it a little tug.
 
Creativity.
 
It’s cousin is called “Magic.”


L.H.

Noir Movies for Dark Times

2/16/2017

 
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I just got over the flu, and while I was sick, I found some good free movies to watch online. The slow pace and dark mood of most of these films is a good fit for a pensive mood, a tired body, or a weakened spirit.
 
I’ll start with two famous films by Hitchcock that are free online:
 
“The Paradine Case” (1947) is a slow-paced legal drama, a good, long movie that’s easy to watch when you’re tired. Great score by Franz Waxman, and a super cast including Gregroy Peck, Charles Laughton, and other great actors in smaller roles. Louis Jordan’s film debut. For some reason film played twice at this link. It’s really only one hour 54 minutes. Watch Movie.
 
“Rebecca” (1940) Joan Fontaine drives me crazy in this movie. She’s so mousy I fear she will crawl away into a hole in the wall. But oh, I love this film. Lawrence Olivier of course, but for me, Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers is one of the all-time great film performances. Waves crashing on the rocks. So Goth. Love this one. Watch Movie.
 
“The Suspect”(1944) is a good Victorian era noir with Charles Laughton. I think you have to like a no-frills noir to like this one, but I’d watch Charles Laughton read the phone book (yes, I’m old enough to remember when we had phone books) and there are some surprises here, on top of Laughton’s terrific turn as a conflicted husband. Watch Movie.

 “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950) is more of true, dark noir. It’s a tough-cop drama with Dana Andrews, who’s one of my all-time favorite actors as the cop.  Opening credits missing, but better quality than other full versions here. Watch Movie.
 
 “The Man Who Cheated Himself “ (1950) A scratchy old print here, but watchable and a total treat for San Franciscans, as it has some absolutely fantastic footage of the old city, including rooftop chase scenes and neat locales. Wonderful. Also, I’m a big fan of the star, Lee J. Cobb, who plays a detective with a moral dilemma. Watch Movie.

 Lastly, I’ll sneak in a light comedy. "Sitting Pretty" (1948) I put up with this silly premise here because I love Clifton Webb and Maureen O’Hara is so very lovely. Plus it’s a fun movie. A family comedy that was the basis for the TV show "Mr. Belvedere," this is pure cotton candy. Great supporting cast with some of Hollywood's best character actors of the era. Watch Movie.

I hope you don’t get the flu, and that you enjoy these old flicks.

L.H.


Photo Essay: A Different Kind of Release Party

7/1/2016

 
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In an average year, The Marine Mammal Center of Sausalito, California takes in around 800 sick or injured animals. This past year, due in part to decreased food availability caused by global warming, they took in more than twice that number. Suffering from malnutrition, sometimes pneumonia or bacterial infections,  the animals are fed and treated at the center's facilities, which include its headquarters in the Marin Headlands as well as field operations in Mendocino, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo Counties.

The survival rate for the animals they take in - some of whom are victims of boat strikes, trash entanglement, and even gunshot wounds - is around 50%.

If it feels unbearable to dwell on the ways in which these creatures are harmed and even destroyed by human actions, don't despair. The 45 staff members and over 1,000 volunteers of the forty-year-old Marine Mammal Center provide an antidote to that hopelessness, offering us a clear example of how an organized, well-meaning group of individuals can make the most fundamental difference: the difference between life and death.And that is something to be celebrated. This past Saturday, June 25th, 2016, I was lucky enough to be present for such a celebration, as several of these animals were restored to their birthright of freedom, released into the water at Drake's Beach, about sixty miles north of San Francisco. 

A few facts:
  • The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC)was founded in 1975 by three locals. The location was a former Nike missile site, which means that now, a place once devoted to tools of war is dedicated to saving lives.
  • TMMC published its first scientific paper in 1979. The title was Nursing Care of Stranded Northern Elephant Seals. Today, forty percent of all scientific literature on the topic of marine mammals worldwide is generated by the center.
  • Over its forty year history, TMMC has rescued and rehabilitated over 20,000 animals, including the humpback whale, "Humphrey," who swam into San Francisco Bay in 1985, and then traveled 69 miles through fresh water up the Sacramento Delta. 
  • If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, you've heard the cries of the pups from the 2000 season, who were recorded at the center by the film's sound engineer, as a basis for the voices of the Orcs.
  • In 1993 the center opened a store and center on Pier 39, so if you can't make it out to the headlands, you can stop by Pier 39 to learn about the sea lions you're seeing around the docks, and maybe while you're at it, do some supportive shopping!

Now, on to the party...

The mid-morning sun burns in a clear blue sky as the vigorous wind scrapes away a layer of sand. A hundred or so spectators gather. Anticipation builds.
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In pairs, arms stretched downward by the weight of their precious charges, the volunteers carry the animals down in crates and place them on the sand.
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Mitch Fong, the center's Individual and Planned Giving Officer, has a gift of his own, for public speaking.  With charm and passion he welcomes us and explains the three tenets of the center's mission: Rescue and rehabilitation, scientific research, and education. In this photo, he reminds us that these are wild animals, and instructs us to keep our oohs and ahs to a minimum, and to back away from the animals if they decide to take a detour on their way to the water.
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Out the sea lions come, stopping just briefly for a conference before heading quickly to the water.
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Last one in...!
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The seals, unlike the eager sea lions, take their time. Once out of the crates, they find their way into a kind of scrum at water's edge, where they linger for minutes before entering the surf.
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Volunteers called "boarders" stand between the animals and the spectators, helping to keep the animals moving in the right direction.
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Even after the animals are in the water, the boarders make their way down the beach, just in case any animals have second thoughts.
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Soon, all we can see is a lone head bobbing in the distance. Our eyes scan the blue. He's gone. No, there he is! And then he's gone again.
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The crates stand empty. 
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One of the crates is labeled "Sea Rider" and "Wun Wun." Wun Wun is a male California sea lion pup who was rescued April 30th from Sunset State Beach in Santa Cruz County. Sea Rider is a female California sea lion pup. She was rescued on May 23 in Monterey County. Both were successfully treated for pneumonia and malnutrition.
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     The midday sun reclaims Drake's Beach for its own.
     We have been allowed, as those who stand at the shore have been for millennia, to eavesdrop on ocean and earth's perennially shifting conversation. But now we wander off. Towards home. Or a hike. Or a Saturday lunch in nearby Point Reyes Station. 
     A momentary loneliness passes over, anonymous and obscure until it abruptly identifies itself as the truest indication of a job well done. Namely, the absence of any trace that the job ever needed doing in the first place.

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www.marinemammalcenter.org
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