June is bustin’ out all over, as Oscar Hammerstein put it, and in California June arrives in March. This is a most fortunate March. General climate projections have 40 million Californians living under the stresses of a drawing West Coast, winter shorter, snowpack smaller. But all this is in the future. The present is most enjoyable. Just stand on our upper deck, look out and see the neighborhood to our southeast, the Excelsior. The distant streets with their no-longer-cheap wood and stucco houses Read more [...]

Well, this blog shall be short, but not sweet. Life hit us last night in the form of a medical emergency, all in the family, and let me point out, now totally resolved. The ending being a happy one. Meanwhile, Jane was suddenly gone. She spent the evening at a Bay Area hospital, and I faced an uncertain prospect. It wasn't clear when she would be home. It was clear that it was time to go to bed. So I did my best. And "my best" consisted of undressing on my own, by now a slow but doable process. Read more [...]

Indigenous people, that is to say people considerably wiser than myself, know when things are out of joint. In particular, they know that one thing is rarely off. The totality of things, the Gestalt, the zeitgeist, whatever big picture speaks to you, that is the thing that is off. I saw it yesterday during my tutoring session with Paulino. He has the wavering attention span of a nine-year-old. So I'm not surprised to see him tune in and out of a checkers game. But this was different. He really Read more [...]

We all have utterly routine moments, and one of mine involves going up our San Francisco street. The keyword is, of course, up. But for me this mostly involves torso position. In a wheelchair, batteries doing the work, uphill is of no consequence. And so, here I was late this very afternoon, steaming quite pleasantly up our street in the dusk until I encountered a known obstacle. Not personally known, but generally known, the chunky older woman who was weaving around in front of the bookshop. By Read more [...]

It has taken a while, but I finally feel part of things, engaged with civic life, in San Francisco. Of course, don't take 'civic' that literally. Beyond the 49 square miles that comprise this city there is a lot that needs attention. Such as the railways. Which is what led to today's lunch with someone from California's largest rail passenger advocacy organization. Which, let me point out, numbers less than 500 members in a state with a population of 40 million. This fact alone floored me. How Read more [...]

Have I been identifying with the weather? Gray, cold and wet? Or is it simply that I (and Jane) have mild colds and one not-so-mildly-ill cat, of whom we are quite fond and whose perilous health reminds me, if not us, of the sad fact of mortality. Note that not everyone feels it is so sad. The human kind, that is. But such is the vague sense of menace and threat with which I live. I tend to take my background anxiety for granted. But recently I've been trying to shove it into the foreground. Read more [...]