Wow, but it's a long way up the Hayes Street hill.  This is the slope made infamous in San Francisco's Bay-to-Breakers marathon, annually the site of tens of thousands of runners, some costumed, a few nude, all winded...laboring up this infamous hiccup of the San Andreas Fault.  Not that anyone struggling up this incline has a neuron to spare for geology.  It's all about getting to the top, staying alive to the top, staying power being all there is.  Though I do have enough energy Read more [...]

What sort of California summer day is this, gray as London and about the same temperature?  It is, of course, the day of the Menlo Park summer festival.  No, it is not called that.  Actually, the thing is a street fair.  And what fare of the streets?  Oh, paintings of Venice.  Olive oil pressers.  Corndog fressers.  Hand puppet makers.  And the San Jose Tamale Company.  I find them last, at the end of the road.  The closed off road, our main Read more [...]

Hello, Paul, hello, Paul.  Thus we greet each other, doppelgänger style, helper and helped.  I make it a point to go out on mornings when volunteer helper Paul is here.  We take a break from chores and head for one of Menlo Park's few breakfast options.  But this morning is different somehow.  Perhaps something in me has settled down.  And down is good.  Down to earth.  Down to business.  Down to basics, including those in the kitchen.  I admit this Read more [...]

Jane says it is a Northumberland day.  I know what she means.  We are in the small park across from Peet's.  All of us.  Two dogs, two recently transported cappuccinos, one scone, one bran muffin.  In short, life is good.  And the breeze from Northumbria?  It is warm enough to be pleasant, cool enough to be stimulating, and above all, moving.  Like the maritime weather churning off the North Sea, the Peninsula air is restless.  We are planning our day. Read more [...]

It is the mystery of the stones.  Like all mysteries, it has several layers and fuzzy boundaries.  And right at this moment the boundary, fuzzy or not, is everything.  For that was the purpose of these stones.  For the Romans, this was it, their northern boundary.  From here on out, abandon hope.  Give up on sub-floor heating, olive oil or mosaics.  Expect to rub shoulders with Picts who were still dressing in skins and hadn't even heard of the Kilt Factory.  Read more [...]

Did I see him in the airport lounge?  Going through security?  Or did we bump into each other in the boarding queue?  Whatever the encounter, he must have offered to help me in some way...and doubtless I declined...and now here we were, Jane and I, in the final moments before the 12 sedentary hours separating Heathrow from San Francisco, waiting outside the aircraft door for whichever ground crew was going to stash my wheelchair in the hold.  And this man walked by.  Tall, Read more [...]