British Columbia Visits the Embarcadero, San Francisco...

..with these photos taken on a cloudy rainy days. Click on title above if you want to see the slide show.

Filoli March 2010

Click on title above to see a slide show of Filoli (Fight,Love,Live).

The Buds at the Utah Hotel, San Francisco...

...on 15 April 2010. Click on title above to see a series of photos from their appearance at the Utah Hotel.
As I was (happily) ensconed among Code Pink friends, I could mostly photograph only Jim McLaren. True, Jim is very photogenic, but I am sorry that there is less representation of Bryan Harrison, vocal and guitar; Dave Coan, percussion; and Elisa Welch, flute, keyboard, guitar (http://art.net/~elisa). I don't know the name of that Chevy Chase lookalike who sat in on mandolin.
For information on the Buds, their upcoming Bay Area concerts, how to order their CD, etc., go to www.TheBudsMusic.org

Andrew Kelsey of the group Uncle Charlie...

... at Hotel Utah in San Francisco on 15 April 2010. Click on title for a handful of photos.

Caetano Veloso 17 April 2010 San Francisco

Click on the title above to see Caetano Veloso at this 17 April 2010 concert in San Francisco. (Excuse the few obscure pictures of the audience, but I wanted to convey their enthusiasm, finally crowding the edge of the stage.)
Personally I like his dreamy, romantic songs, but they do not truly represent the wild things he does with his voice, especially with his trio of very young musicians who are hard driving, with a beat that seems ritualistic, with Veloso as their slow, shuffle-dancing priest (Pedro Sa, electric guitar; Ricardo Dias Gomes, base and Fender Rhodes; Marcelo Callado, drums). As the booklet for the San Francisco Jazz Spring Season notes, Veloso "has taken on everything from funky samba workouts to ethereal balladry and orchestral pieces." Recently, as demonstrated in this concert, Veloso has "used jittery indie rock in order to process the intense emotions surrounding his divorce..." He now has "an edgier vision..." But you might want to sample the sweeter side, you might copy and sample this from YouTube, from Almodovar's film TALK TO HER: "Cucurrucucu Paloma," or discover pieces of Veloso there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CsA1CcA4Z8&feature=related

Plum Blossom Festival, 18 April 2010

It is not news that San Francisco can feel more like a film than reality. So many possible things to do today -- the new Ecology Center at Third Street and Cesar Chavez, where the native Ohlones would be present. But I was instead going to the annual Northern California Book Awards at the Main Library. But before I could get there I found myself walking parallel to some portion of the Plum Blossom Festival ... and that seemed to blend into something else .. Was it a Fools Parade? ... Cllick on title above, PLUM BLOSSOM FESTIVAL ...

The Two Chanas Win the Prize - 18 April 2010

At the 18 April 2010 Northern California Books Award, Chana Block and Chana Kronfeld won in the category of "Translation -- Poetry" for HOVERING AT A LOW ALTITUDE; THE COLLECTED POETRY OF DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH.

More Recoveries...A Letter from Sebastian

As I described in my article, "Sebastian's Nocturnal Dream Shows," in the May-June 2008 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review, at the old Palace Theater in North Beach where the Cockettes were born, there were first the wonderful films programed by Sebastian (AKA Milton Miron). His programming of films seemed to have a profound intent, and certainly inspired and intrigued me so I sent him a fan letter. And in my opening boxes from decades ago, I found Sebastian's sweet response -- I can see why I saved the letter -- and you might want to click and enlarge his letter as the script itself is so very charming.


And I have saved one of my free passes for the day when there is another Nocturnal Dream Shows:

I must have photographed the old Nocturnal Dreams "headquarters" in the Mission after it was abandoned.....

ALICE DRAWINGS COMPARED

Thanks to Paul Ha.'s facsimile of the original manuscript of Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, I can compare Carroll's own original drawings with those of Tenniel who illustrated the published version. Click on ALICE DRAWINGS COMPARED, above, if you would like to compare 5 drawings. In case I am violated some copyright laws, I will probably delete this from my blog fairly soon.

Marga's Birthday

CLICK ON "Marga's Birthday" title above to view a slide show of this celebration.
Hosts Martha H and Thom B are barely present in these photos -- sorry, hosts. We had a little group of 7 to give Marga a birthday brunch. No one had any trouble saying how wonderful she is, how her presence means love is present. With the hosts, Jim E, Jane B, and Leslie A (and Otis, the pug, and the cats Lily and Jack) looking on, Rod K gave Marga a birthday ritual. I guess I won't have to worry about copyright infringement as I cannot find my copy of Hafiz' THE GIFT to present the verses Rod read, and the one that Marga read, but perhaps they will list the titles of those verses in the COMMENTS section of this entry. A beautiful day to celebrate a beautiful human being.

PEACE MARCH

CLICK ON "PEACE MARCH" in title to see a slide show.
Soon after the time (10:34 a.m.) when the year turned to Spring Equinox, there was a Peace March in San Francisco. It will be clear from my photos that I was mostly following the course of friends through the march. Demonstrations now seem to be in the trough between two waves. The wars should still be the most terrible business that concerns us, but it is difficult to counter the fact that war has become everyday business for U.S.Americans (mostly representing jobs for young people unable to find work). Instead of a Peace March (I tend to type "Peach March," and wish the day would come when we would gather for a "Peach March), we should call it a Day For All Protests, and in some ways it may be good to bundle the large number of terrible problems and parade them as reminders through the streets. There were signs for every problem -- unfair incarcerations; protests against capital punishment; need for jobs -- perhaps only half of the picket signs referred to war.

THRESHOLD CHOIR'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Threshold Choir, whose members team up to sing at the bedsides of the ill, had their 10th Anniversary Celebration on Spring Equinox, 20 March 2010, at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church in Oakland, California. Soloist Melanie DeMore conducted for a while and sang a beautiful "There Is a Balm in Gilead." Founder/Director/Conductor Kate Munger was honored by the Choir.
CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE, "THRESHOLD CHOIR'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION," to see a few photos from that evening (unfortunately, I had to arrive late).

SOME KIND OF ESSAY

Click on SOME KIND OF ESSAY above -- if you want to see what it means.

Photos added to LAKE TAHOE IN WINTER

Click on title above if you want to see an expanded slide show of pre-digital photos of Lake Tahoe in Winter, when a group of us, renting a house for a few days, found our selves blessed with snowy beauty (Fred G., Paul H., Bob M., James D.)
Along with the photos I wrote a verse-- that I keep re-writing...(below):


Lake Tahoe, Winter

The sleeping bear of winter snores where
water rolls the stones along the shore.
The seagulls and the mallards bounce
on waves, hoping to get the score –
“Where is my morsel?” “What is my fate?”

The slow white bullets of snow drill
the trees, water, and earth with deadly cold.
The lake grinds its pebbled teeth. It’s a thrill
to stand in the breath of the bear, feeling bold.
Yet where is my morsel? What, my fate?



- "Lake Tahoe, Winter" - James McColley Eilers, Copyright March 2010

Oakland in February and March 2010

For a slide show of Oakland views, CLICK ON SUBJECT LINE, "OAKLAND IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2010"

Two Farewell Haiku for Victor Gonzalez

Two Haiku to Say Fare-Thee-Well on 6 March 2010 to Old Friend Victor Gonzalez Leaving to Live in Merida, in the Yucatan, Mexico

I.
When’s the right moment
for (how the bow string trembles)
two old friends to part?

II.
We care more than most
though our parting looks more like
weak tea than strong wine.

My Two Mothers

On the left, below, is my mother, Ethel Ruth McColley Eilers, the mother of my older brother, Edward Lloyd (Buster), myself, James Thomas, and my younger brother, Dennis Raymond. Ethel was always allied with her older sister, on the right below, Elsie Mathilde McColley Pierce Scherer, the matriarch of the McColley clan, who had helped and protected Ruth during their difficult early years. Both were present throughout the lives of myself and my brothers, like two mothers, but suddenly at the end of her life, Ruth felt she had been oppressed by Elsie all her life, and severed their relationship. Below that is my verse about this "double oedipal" situation.



Mother

I did not let them come into my heart anymore –
my mother and my aunt who hovered over
my childhood. When they came to visit,
they jostled to hug me, but my aunt always won.
“Yes, hug her first,” said my mother bitterly.
My two mothers pulled me apart. I was supposed
to bring meaning to their lives, find
the Golden Fleece, return with the Holy Grail.
That’s why I made it a point to fail.

But they were the talkers, the story tellers;
they made me a writer, and somewhere back there
I believed in one or the other. Lying in bed
against my aunt’s ample bosom, while she read
to me from Bambi and Forever Amber, I was glad
that my uncle worked the night shift in the mills.
Recently I let it come back into my life –
that fearful mother thing. It would suffocate,
I thought. It will cover my mouth like a breast

but also cover my nose and stop my breath.
But then I let it come. It was a soft cape
at the back of my head and shoulders. I sank
into it as if it were bread dough. It held me.
I let it come back: breast, womb, warm
enfolding arms, comfort. It was no longer
the Wasp Queen or the Virgin Mary with crescent
talons sweeping down the night to tear
out my heart. The mother thing, freed

of my mother and my aunt, came into my life
as if it were part of the universe, that black
stuff between the stars drifting down to hold
me and to heal me and to make me not afraid
of love and connection. It’s like a fur cap
for a cold head. It’s like lifting a warm
tortilla in your hand. I intend to entertain
this stranger, the Mother. I only wish my
mother had found her. Goddess of Mercy,
Our Lady of Compassion, heal us all.

(Copyright 2010, James McColley Eilers)

WELCOME, SPRING

And if you want to see some other photos, CLICK ON THE TITLE, "WELCOME, SPRING," above.

Happy Birthday, Paul Heidt

One of the reasons I love Paul Heidt and wish him a happy birthday is that when we were on an AIDS Walk where there were religous bigots along the way, Paul cheerfully asked me to take this picture, rather deflating the fervor of the young man behind him who was holding this sign:

Happy New Year, Year of the Tiger

Sophia Likes Puddles, Puddles Like Sophia

Chapter One: Scanning PreDigital Photos

CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE to see a slide show of predigital photos (as I go through storage boxes of old photos)...

Elephant is Dead, Long Live Elephant

In the 1989 earthquake this elephant bell was broken...


...but I glued it back together, and the ceramic bell rings again. It is marked inside with the date of that earthquake, and awaits its fate in the next major earthquake:

Happy 86th Birthday, George Birimisa

George Birimisa, author, playwright, teacher, friend, survivor, victorious....

Snake Dance

Stathi Stratis, teaching Greek dance in San Francisco, took Peter Arvanitis and me to see a man perform a dance with a snake. To see a slide show of the dance, click on the title above, SNAKE DANCE. At the end, he draped it on Stathi. Then let a woman in the audience try wearing a python.

San Francisco Greek Festival Many Years Ago

Before my friend Peter Arvanitis moved to Seattle, and then to Portland, he lived in the Bay Area and in his company I got to sample the local Greek-American community. Many years ago, we went to an annual festival next to the previous Greek church that stood on Valencia Street that later burned down. If you want to see some of the children who danced that day click on the title above, SAN FRANCISCO GREEK FESTIVAL MANY YEARS AGO. The children were undoubtedly prepared for the dance by Peter's friend (and mine, I hope) Stathi (Stathis Stratis) who went on to Rhodes in Greece.

Organ Concert by Olivier Latry, Notre Dame Cathedral

One day when I knew I would not easily make it from BART to my apartment in Oakland, I stopped in at the new “Christ the Light” cathedral to go to the bathroom (I feel I have that right as an ex-Catholic – they owe me for all the psychic torture and the time in therapy, but my body needed no such rationale); I noticed that they were installing an organ, in two separate parts, on either side of the altar. The mystery of the two wooden awnings there was finally resolved. As a notice of five recitals introducing the new organ stated that the fee was a “free-will donation,” I arrived at the official inauguration on 11 February 2010 only to find that you needed to have reserved tickets. We non-ticket holders were treated in a cold-blooded manner, left to wonder if we would be admitted after every possible ticket holder had been to Will Call, so I went searching for a way to sneak in, but all doors were locked. So I stood at the back of the cathedral, thinking I might just stand there, but soon the other non-ticket holders began to gather there so that I could not remain inconspicuous. Should I believe that it was “God” who intervened at that point? Right by the baptistery I saw Silvino Guzman, a Filipino with whom I had forged a good friendship when we both worked at California Pacific Medical Center Foundation. I truly only wanted to say hello, and persuaded an usher to let me by to say hello, but, of course, Silvino immediately sent me along the side to the front, which gave me the confidence that convinced other interfering ushers that I was permitted. Soon the other non-ticket holders were sitting beside me. It was a good place to sit, to the right of the organist, so that one was fully conscious of the “stereophonic” effect of the divided organ.

Of course, as this was the official inauguration of the organ, a priest had to speak, who then introduced the red-capped main guy, the so-called “Most Reverend” Bishop of Oakland, Salvatore J. Cordileone, the chief force behind the anti-gay No on 8 proposition*, talking about how the cathedral was “for the entire Bay Area community. Why didn’t I leave at that point, or shout my protest – well, for various reasons – but mostly because I know that there is never any way to reach Beauty except by passing through a pool of slime. Be it a Prince of the Church or a Captain of Industry, when have artists (or anyone) ever been free of sadistic control freaks, speaking with pious hypocrisy.

The Bishop hoped that “this organ will excite and inspire.” Lastly, the boyish Music Director of the cathedral spoke; his accent was sort of Dutchy, and the people beside me explained that he was South African. Of course, it made sense to compliment the builders of the cathedral, Skidmore, Billings and Owings [my friend Martha Hubert has since provided me a correction: "SOM is the architect, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. http://www.som.com/content.cfm/into_the_light ], and to thank Daniel Whalen and his wife Katharine Conroy Whalen whose gift paid for the organ. Later the guest organist pointed to the people who had created ”the Letoureau 92 ranks, four-manual, pedal organ with 5298 pipes.”

The organist for this special concert was “Olivier Latry, titular organist of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris…one of the world’s most distinguished organists.”
http://www.cathedraledeparis.com/Olivier-LATRY,405
(He has recorded all the organ music of Messiaen.) It was hard for me to belive that Mr. Latry was not a sweetly gay man, in his bowtie and silvery grey jacket, and that would be a perfect "miracle," considering Bishop Cordileone's hatred of gay people, but I cannot label Mr. Latry. After a Toccata by Leon Boellmann, Latry talked with the audience about the introduction of this organ as being like “the birth of a baby,” and scanning the organ, added “—a BIG baby.” He devoted a good amount of time to demonstrating what the new organ could do. While the visible organ is large enough, he indicated other places where there hidden pipes. He sounded the low, low sound of one of those hidden pipes that is 16-feet high. Once he had filled the cathedral with the most immense sounds of the organ, all the distasteful Catholicism became irrelevant and a miniscule distraction. Now the building made sense – its chief reason for existing was to house that organ, for what other space could be big enough for it? At great length, Latry demonstrated the wide range of possible sounds, and clearly loved the chance to play it. “The building – we – are part of the sound,” he said.

I was making these notes, and did not want to be writing during the performance of any piece, but was going to look for some brief description for each piece, and one of the people nearby thought I was reviewing the concert, saying “Why isn’t this concert being reviewed? Why was no announcement? So you’re reviewing this concert?” The woman beside me said, “He’s been making notes.” I explained that any review I was writing would be brief, inadequate, intended for friends, but ended up agreeing to put it on my blog. The San Francisco man disturbed by the lack of news about the concert said to the pleasant San Francisco woman beside me, “Would you ever have believed we would come to Oakland to see something?”

Here, for the programme, not for my thumbnail descriptions…

Passacaglia & Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582 (Johan Sebastian Bach) – Except for a brief quiet visit with an angel, torrents of music.

Intermezzo from Suite pour orgue (Augustin Barie) – Sweet and gentle

Carillon de Westminster (Louis Vierne): Knocks your sox off

Choral variations on the theme of ‘Veni Creator’ (Maurice Durufle) – As one would expect of this composer, gentleness…beauty and magic without fear…and, as it is an organ, after all, a final triumph

Berceuse (Lullaby) in memory of Louis Vierne (Pierre Cochereau) – ethereal scintillation – then a lonely rocket wandering aimlessly

Dieu parmi nous (God Among Us) from La Nativite du Seigneur (Olivier Messiaen) – meditation as extreme drama, benefiting from the precedence of someone like Ives

Improvisation on submitted themes: Latry opened a sealed envelope in which the Bishop had suggested a religious theme. Latry played the theme, paused, then played his variations – colors sliding through water building to a wave that was like being inside an airplane engine – an exploration of the organ’s possibilities, probably, that may have gone too far.

The audience applauded him for so long that he returned with a wonderful encore I cannot identify. (Charles L., who was at the concert, emailed me later that it was the Toccata in F from Charles-Marie Widor's 5th Symphony, Widor also having been an organist at Notre Dame.)

For anyone who wants to visit my past slide surveys of the cathedral, one can be viewed by clicking on the title, above, for this section: Organ Concert by Olivier Latry, Notre Dame Cathedral

Another slide show is available somewhere earlier on this blog.

If you want more information on the malevolent Bishop Cordileone (“Shortly after his side’s victory in the Proposition 8 campaign, Salvatore Cordileone was installed as the new Catholic bishop in Oakland”), this from Chris Tompson’s article in East Bay Express, August 2009:

“All across the state, gay men, lesbians, and their friends picketed hostile churches and boycotted businesses that backed the amendment. And as they contemplated their fate, they asked themselves: Who did this to us? Was it the Mormons? The National Organization for Marriage? Black voters? White evangelical megachurches? Now, eight months after the election that broke so many hearts, the truth has come out. It was the new Catholic bishop of Oakland. …. What almost no one knows is that without Bishop Sal, gay men and lesbians would almost surely still be able to get married today. As an auxiliary bishop in San Diego, Cordileone played an indispensable role in conceiving, funding, organizing, and ultimately winning the campaign to pass Proposition 8. It was Bishop Sal and a small group of Catholic leaders who decided that they had to amend the state constitution. It was Bishop Sal who found the first major donor and flushed the fledgling campaign with cash. It was Bishop Sal who personally brought in the organization that took the lead on the petition drive. And it was Bishop Sal who coordinated the Catholic effort with evangelical churches around the state. Bishop Sal even helped craft the campaign's rhetorical strategy, sitting in on focus groups to hone the message of Proposition 8. …. Cordileone gloated about his work in an interview with an obscure Catholic radio network. He bragged about how gay men and lesbians never saw him coming and called gay marriage a Satanic plot by ‘the Evil One’ to destroy morality in the modern world.
“Now, Cordileone's work has been rewarded, and the Vatican has made him the most important religious figure in the East Bay. Alameda County is one of the most liberal and gay-friendly parts of the world; it arguably has the most lesbian residents in the United States, and voters here rejected Proposition 8 by almost 62 percent. And the man who leads some 400,000 Catholics from his new Lake Merritt cathedral, who articulates the loudest moral and religious voice in the region and has the power of the Vatican at his disposal, just got done taking the right to marry from every gay man and woman in the East Bay.
“When you first speak to Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, you're immediately struck by his sincerity and compassion. Throughout the Proposition 8 campaign, he took great pains to emphasize the humanity of gay men and lesbians, citing the catechism and a pastoral letter that denounces anti-gay prejudice....But along with a crackerjack mind and an intense identification with the poor, Cordileone has cultivated one of the most theologically conservative worldviews imaginable. Especially when it comes to sexual matters, Bishop Sal is conservative and uncompromising. In 2006, the US Conference of Bishops was drafting a pastoral letter that listed examples of sins so great that Catholics could not in good conscience receive the sacrament of Communion unless they repented of them through the sacrament of penance. Cordileone led an effort to include the use of contraception among them. The effort failed, but if Cordileone had his way, women on the Pill would be banned from receiving the body of Christ.
“…. Cordileone had been strategizing with ecumenical opponents of gay marriage for years, and a shadow network known as ‘Protect Marriage’ was already in place. The National Organization for Marriage, a New Jersey nonprofit dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage around the country, had what Cordileone called both the intellectual arguments and the ‘practical know-how’ to run the campaign. On December 23, 2007, Cordileone called organization president Maggie Gallagher and asked her group to come to California and get to work. Within weeks, the organization was helping to collect signatures. ….
“Eventually, millions of dollars would flood into the campaign, much of it from powerful Catholics, and especially from Catholic businessmen in San Diego, Cordileone's home turf. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, gave $1 million. Doug Manchester, a San Diego hotelier who sat with Cordileone on the University of San Diego board of trustees, gave $125,000. Terry Caster, who operates San Diego's A-1 Self Storage, donated almost $700,000. Throughout it all, Cordileone continued to speak at fund-raisers around Southern California. ….
“Cordileone even had a hand in crafting the message of the campaign. As professional campaign organizers shopped different angles around to focus groups, they decided to shift their pitch as far from the question of gay rights as possible. Instead, the campaign would be all about judicial activism, religious liberty, sex education in public schools, and the idea that children need both a mother and a father. Bishop Sal sat in on two of those focus groups as campaign leaders passed around a ‘proposed’ sex-education textbook called ‘My Daddy's Wedding,’ watching as people blanched at the gay-friendly subject matter.
“And as the campaign grew and grew, Cordileone was astonished at how complacent ‘the other side’ was. He quietly watched as gay men and lesbians took their victory for granted, never imagining that their foes were assembling a powerful and disciplined coalition. He would later gloat over them in his radio interview.
“ ‘What's interesting is what happened on the other side,’ Cordileone said. ‘They didn't realize until after we had collected a couple hundred thousand signatures that we were up to this. ...’
“ ‘Oho!’ chuckled the radio show's host, Father Thomas Loya. ‘That's a big switch, Bishop Sal. The other side — we caught them sleeping!’ ….
“On November 1, on the eve of the election, Cordileone found himself at another ecstatic religious festival. Pentecostal pastor Lou Engle organized ‘The Call,’ a massive pro-Proposition 8 rally at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, the home of football's San Diego Chargers. Tens of thousands of rhapsodic souls streamed into the stadium along with a Catholic procession from Mission San Diego. For twelve hours, they swooned and spasmed to fundamentalist hip-hop and frenzied testimony from young witnesses for Christ. Beneath the scoreboard, Focus on the Family leader James Dobson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council exhorted everyone to save marriage. ‘Ex-gay’ men and women told their stories of deliverance from the ‘lifestyle.’ Cordileone watched as pastors called on the masses to repent of their sins of complacency and negligence, and he thrilled to what he called the ‘sacramental worldview’ on display.
“Three days later, gay men and lesbians lost their right to marry in California.
“Now, Salvatore Cordileone is leading the faithful in Oakland. Almost immediately after being named the new bishop, Cordileone sent a message that he has every intention of continuing the work he pursued so vigorously in San Diego. In March, Walter Hoye, a local minister and anti-abortion activist, was jailed for violating Oakland's law keeping protesters from coming within eight feet of the entrance to an abortion clinic. Bishop Sal visited Hoye in jail, where the two shouted encouragement to one another through the glass. ….
“Rebecca Kaplan, a lesbian member of the Oakland City Council, agrees that she, too, will try to work with the new bishop. ‘The scripture makes quite clear that hatred or prejudice toward the stranger is the worst sin. But the fact that he has committed that sin will not prevent me from working with him, because I believe in working with everybody.’
“But then Kaplan learned what Bishop Cordileone had to say at the end of his interview on the A Body of Truth show. As the show was winding down, Bishop Sal mused upon gay marriage one last time. ‘The ultimate attack of the Evil One is the attack on marriage,’ he said. ‘If you take marriage apart, everything comes unraveled. It's been frayed at the edges, and now moving more and more toward the center. But you take marriage out, it all comes unraveled. It all comes tumbling down. And again, the evangelicals, they understand that. They understand this is an attack of the Evil One at the core institution.’
“When Kaplan heard that, she hissed, ‘My great-grandparents were rounded up and put in Nazi prison camps by people who used that sort of language.’
“Recently, Cordileone clarified those remarks. ‘I do believe that evil exists outside of people's minds,’ he said. ‘What I was saying, there is, we have to be spiritually aware that society is decaying. I know that people on the other side are people of good faith. ... I don't think they're consciously working for evil.’
“And so, when gay men and lesbians and their friends and families lay down their heads at night, they can rest easy. Because somewhere in the grand new cathedral on the shores of Lake Merritt, the new bishop of Oakland doesn't think they're consciously working for evil.
…. (“The Father of Proposition 8,” East Bay Express, 12 August 2009

Buy BURNED

Louise Nayer's amazing account of the tragic explosion that occured in her early childhood has been published -- and you can order your copy: http://www.louisenayer.com/

New Green

A big event to no-one but me in my little domicile....I had a great variety of plants that I nurtured on the balcony at my previous apartment building. I had to pass most of them on to a pleasant young couple in that building. In the new building I found I had very little light for the four plants I brought along. The maidenhair fern thrives in this light, but the bonzai I had nurtured for years was finally down to two leaves, then one leaf, then was irrefutably DEAD. But a guy at the local nursery recommended the first plant below (I need to get the name) that looks so glossy but requires no light and very little water, and my friend Kenneth recommended the second plant, a spathiphyllum, which looks nice against Martha Hubert's painting -- and I am happy again with these new companions. Plants being my only pets, I feel less alone!

1 February 2010

A Brief Visit to the deYoung Museum, San Francisco

CLICK ON TITLE ABOVE TO SEE A BRIEF SLIDE SHOW -- a brief visit to the deYoung Museum to see the exhibit of Amish quilts -- and took a few other photos besides. In order, glass sculpturs by Nicolas Africano, Mary Ann Zynsky, Dale Chihuly; woven basket by Honda Syoryu; Mayan figures; etc.

For Those in the Turtle Tribe

Earth and Its History

Earth island slid about – a turtle
that began a journey of millenniums;
it split into continents that lowered
arms to make peninsulas, with beaches.

Where the land spread and cracked,
rain created lakes. Oceans begat,
along each drifting continent,
the lacey edge of bays and inlets.

Now all wait for the great turtle’s return –
a Oneness that none on earth may see again –
a longed-for perfect fit that might reunite
and reveal the original earth – Pangaea.

Sweet search in every person – Why do we
wait? Children of the Turtle, we are whole,
while divided, complete in the great Heart
revealed because the Earth fell apart.

– James McColley Eilers
copyright 2010