As if there weren’t enough to worry about — climate disaster, endless wars, A.I., fragile democracies — along comes rizz.
Rizz is the newly-crowned Oxford Word of the Year, which is a Very Big Deal. I mean, it won out over three other finalists — Swiftie, prompt, and situationship. I could’ve dealt with prompt. Even though I’ve always tried to be prompt and am thus a little miffed about AI re-purposing a perfectly good word. (I could not have dealth with situationship, sorry.)
Rizz, though? Now that it’s THE word, I am considering how it and I can get along. Officially it means “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner;” unofficially it means all of the above, or, in general, maybe, pizazz — although pizazz never got to be Word of the Year when it slid into the lexicon a century or so ago.
Rizz. Apparently if you have it everybody knows. If you don’t have it, as I secretly fear may be my bottom-line situationship, what can you do? (Situationship, in case you’re over 30, is when the relationship you’re in is not quite a real relationship, or at least you’re not having sex with whomever or whatever else you’re relating to. It’s complicated.)
The Oxford people tell us that rizz is “believed to be a shortened form of the word ‘charisma’, taken from the middle part of the word.” Charisma, according to Wikipedia, “is a personal quality of presence or charm that others find compelling. Scholars in sociology, political science, psychology, and management reserve the term for a type of leadership seen as extraordinary.”
Fleetingly, now and then I might have had some charisma. I like to think I’ve been influential in a cause or two, if not identifiably charismatic. But even that wouldn’t help when it comes to rizzhood.
You can’t, in short, rizz your way into being rizz, even if the new Word of the Year is both a noun and a verb. Rizz, it seems, just iz.
INTRODUCING AN 8-YEAR-OLD TO A MUSEUM, AND A FAVORITE ARTIST FRIEND
Olympia and her mom studying a Ruth Asawa wire sculpture(Author photo)
I was lucky enough to have known the artist Ruth Asawa. And now I’m lucky to know one of her newest fans.
Born in California in 1926 to Japanese immigrant farmers who were not allowed to become American citizens or own land, Asawa endured family separation and hardships after the eruption of World War II that would have embittered the most generous of souls. She and her siblings lived for five months in horse stalls still reeking of dung, going from there to an overcrowded internment camp that was surrounded by barbed wire and watch towers.
But Asawa harbored no resentment and cast no blame, saying decades later “I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment.” Because in those years she first discovered her love for painting and drawing and began what would be an amazing lifetime of art: creating, teaching, drawing everyone around her into the beauty she saw and knew. (Among the several fine books about Asawa my favorite is Everything She Touched by Marilyn Chase. Worth a read. Great Christmas gift.)
Asawa wire sculpture in Whitney show (Author photo)
The first major show of Asawa’s drawings is at the Whitney Museum until January 15, Ruth Asawa Through Line, and it is balm for the soul.
My visit was extra special thanks to my new friend Olympia. She arrived, with her mom, a writer friend, all dressed up and appropriately excited. If I were more knowledgable myself it would have been helpful for Olympia’s art education, but I absolutely loved being the gateway — and being able to tell tales of knowing Asawa in San Francisco.
The author with Ruth Asawa, early 2000s
In the Whitney gallery, we met another woman who had been a neighbor, and it quickly became the Old Hometown Asawa Admiration Society. Ruth and her husband, architect Al Lanier whom she met at Black Mountain College, raised their children in a charming but unpretentious house around the corner from the school where she was a constant presence.
Asawa’s hands were never still. When she came to tea at my house she would pull a batch of papers from her bag and, while we talked, turn them into origami doves or other shapes. I remember saying, as she left the table scattered with beautiful little origami pieces, “Ruth! Are these mine?!?” (They were.)
The visit to the Whitney show was the best of Art: introducing a young newcomer and honoring a down-to-earth yet extraordinary woman who spent her life bringing others into her world. It was a world of beauty and essential humanity.
You can see it until January 15. Take an 8-year-old with you if you can.
“You can stop worrying now; everything happened just as it had to. You did what was assigned to you . .”
We wish.
Czeslaw Milosz’ “Awakened” is a poem about death, but it speaks also to life. Especially today, when there are enough things to worry about — globally, locally and in between — to make calming poetry a necessity at 3 AM and a respite tool any other time of day.
So I keep “Awakened” handy, whether awake or asleep or in between. If peace on earth seems an elusive possibility, maybe doing what’s assigned is enough for today.
I recently, happily became a Friend of Medium, which comes with a limited edition tote bag. I’ve actually been a Medium friend for several years — it’s a great platform with interesting writers and readers — but now I’m a Friend, capital F. That is to say, I increased my membership fee.
It’s not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things. I like the fact that now I can send stories, via Friend Links, to non-member friends who have long grumbled from behind the impenetrable paywall, and Medium writer friends will benefit from my attention to their stories.
But I asked them to hold the tote bag.
Not that I don’t love tote bags!! Cloth bags, canvas bags, reusable paper bags. Grocery bags, destination wedding swag bags.
But I can’t throw them away. I have, by rough estimate, 572,364 of them. I think there is a law somehwere prohibiting the disposal of a reusable bag — even for people who don’t live in California.
Here’s the inescapable truth: your life is in your tote bag collection.
This may be why, other than fear of criminal indictment, you can’t throw them away.
Speaking of criminals. In a very long history of parking my car in sketchy areas of San Francisco, only one time did thieves break in. I know enough never to leave ANYthing in a parked car. But a canvas bag containing a few of my favorite canvas bags, just so as never to be without a bag? Who’d have thought. Sure enough, some evildoer smashed my back window and snatched my bag of bags. Hopefully they are still in circulation . . . somewhere.
When toting stuff around on miscellaneous errands my mind often drifts toward existential questions. Foremost among these is the speculation that today’s endless catastrophies often feel like the End Times.
But somehow, if the planet implodes or whatever weary planets do, I have a sense that our tote bags will survive — relics to be pondered over when some new civilization looks back on us eons hence.
Maybe I’d better get the Medium Friend Tote just in case.
There it was, peace on earth: Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Mormons, Catholics, Buddhists, Brahma Kumaris and assorted others hanging out together around bountiful breakfast tables and offering prayers in every known faith tradition. . . beginning with an Ohlone Prayer in the Four Directions because “we acknowledge we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone . . .”
OK, it’s San Francisco.
But in addition to all that doom loop stuff you’ve been reading about, in the City of St Francis there is a powerful interfaith community that works and shares and agitates for good even when it’s not being called upon to fight a specific instance of antisemitism or racial violence or Palestinian hate (or homelessness.) The several hundred gathered for this purely celebratory event were members and supporters of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, now in its 35th year.
The 23rd Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast happened in the early morning of Tuesday the 21st, and for those few hours there was peace. And a lot of joy, some hearty group singing, minimal politicking (in San Francisco, politics manage to sneak in everywhere) and a closing song with accompanying harp.
In the beginning: after that acknowledgment was read, local Ohlone Andrew Galvin (whose day job is curator of Old Mission Dolores) explained he was not of the Ramaytush Language — Ohlone tribes of old identified with the separate languages they spoke — but it mattered not. Galvin helped us express gratitude to the grandfather spirits of North, South, East and West — plus Earth and Sky. How can you miss?
Prayers for the meal (“saying grace,” in olden-days terms) were offered by Islamic School teacher Kashif Abdullah, Methodist pastor Staci Current and Rabbi Amanda Russell.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (Author photo)
Politics only mildly intervened, with Nancy Pelosi — referred to among this gathering as ‘Speaker,’ and don’t bother with the ‘Emerita’ — quoting a little scripture and a little St Francis. Plus, the Mayor spoke, because that’s what mayors do.
But about that closing song — “Blessings Upon Blessings ” — a solo/sing-along which has been traditional for this occasion since long pre-pandemic. The singer was my Brahma Kumaris friend Sr Elizabeth, whom you might have seen onstage as Snow White in Beach Blanket Babylon a few decades back. She has the voice of an angel, even when not accompanied by a fellow Brahma Kumari harpist.
The author with Brahma Kumaris friends Sr Sukanya and Sr Elizabeth
I could be a Brahma Kumari — if I could sit still long enough. They believe in stillness and meditation and peace, plus, they have women leaders. As a finale to this event Sr Elizabeth’s traditional send-off captured the spirit of the occasion:
“Blessings Upon Blessings” is about being friends, understanding one another, living in peace, all those quaint notions that appear from time to time as possibilities. This was just one time to celebrate possibilities, among a multitude of good folks from a multitude of faiths.
I’m thankful for the celebration, and the multitudes.
They were called the “Mighty Five.” A handful of Russian composers wanted to create a national style nearly two centuries ago. This reporter is singularly unqualified to discuss, at length, their movement or its success.
But I have forever loved Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Mussorgsky was, despite his alcoholism, erratic behaviors, and early death, one of the mightiest of the Five. Surely one of the most imaginative.
When their artist/architect friend Viktor Hartman died, at 39, the musicians arranged an exhibition of his drawings that inspired Mussorgsky’s orchestral responses. Collected into “Pictures at an Exhibition” the music evokes Hartman’s drawings of gardens, catacombs, marketplaces, and — one of my favorites — the ‘Ballet of Chicks in Their Shells.
Fernando Escartiz “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells — Mixed Media. In “The Pictures” exhibit at San Francisco Symphony (Author Photo)
The same week that this reporter enjoyed the San Francisco Symphony’s performance of “Pictures at an Exhibition” I was lucky enough to attend an Event — ‘concert’ does not quite cut it — featuring the SFJazz Collective, an all-star ensemble and composers workshop that performs newly commissioned pieces by members plus fresh arrangements of works by modern masters.
Before the Collective came on, SFJazz Founder and Executive Director Randall Kline brought onstage two remarkable young men, Dan Tepfer (b 1982) and Joshue Ott (b 1977) who are — among other things — turning music into art in ways Mussorgsky couldn’t possibly have imagined.
A seat in Row H offered a view of musical notes turning into linear strips of color with the striking of a piano key. Or mushrooming orange shapes evoked by a mellow saxophone. Before our eyes — projected onto the walls of the SFJazz auditorium, which was designed for just such a purpose — the music became art.
Pre-concert view from Row H (Author Photo)
Dan Tepfer, who grew up in a musical and scientific family in Paris, has degrees in astrophysics and jazz piano performance. He is, by contemporary definition, a pianist/composer/coder. Joshue Ott, according to his website, “is a visualist and software designer who creates cinematic visual improvisations that are performed live and projected in large scale.” He does this by using something called superDraw, a software instrument he designed.
Back in the 20th century — 1940s, to be precise — my sister Mimi and I began piano lessons as kindergarteners. Within a few years, Mimi was playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations and I was playing Brown Eyed Susans Nod Their Heads. She went on to a distinguished college music degree. In my own defense, I eventually earned a BA in Art.
And in addition to “Pictures at an Exhibition,” I have never not loved the Goldberg Variations.
I could not, though, have ever imagined them “chromatically inverted” to become #BachUpsideDown — but Tepfer did. It was a way of keeping himself sane during the pandemic, he writes on his website. Tepfer thinks Bach was a badass, with which Bach would probably agree. Tepfer wrote the necessary computer program, then created a video of himself playing the Variations with the program playing it backward. Think G Major translating into G Minor. You can access videos on his website but be prepared to spend the next day or two unable to get anything else done.
The icing on this musical cake is the appearance, is in the video of notes as color and light. It is as if a modern-day Mondrian were hiding somewhere in the piano strings, threading the aural into the visual.
“You have to choose sides,” said my friend, on her way to a pro-Palestine rally.
I think there is too much choosing of sides.
You do not have to hate Israelis to believe that Palestinians need a homeland. Or hate Russians if you support Ukraine. You do not have to condone Hamas to pray that Israel tries to obey “the rules of war.”
You do not have to condone war to acknowledge the need for rules.
You only have to work and pray for leaders you believe will seek peace. For leaders entrusted with decision-making that is complex and difficult beyond belief. And to support those leaders through their flawed struggles.
You have to listen to people who disagree with you. To keep hope alive against all odds.
To do justice, be kind.
And pray the light will — eventually — overcome the darkness.
Contemplating the Pacific before Marathon Day 2006 (Author photo)
In the untroubled days of my long-ago, think 1940s, central Virginia childhood I was not what you’d call a stand-out athlete.
Back before Little League transformed playtime into organized sports, a kid needed to be agile at kick-the-can and ferocious at dodge ball. I was neither. Oh, I wasn’t the last one chosen, but I also wasn’t often captain.
Intricate heirarchies were built around who could climb highest in what tree; I would get to about the three-quarter mark and start thinking about broken bones, of which I had my share. In short, the time and place called for a degree of bravado I desperately wished for and basically lacked.
But I could run.
Early on I learned that running could win friends and influence social standing. So I was a clutz at catching (or hitting) softballs? Get me on base, somehow, and I could fly. Pinch runner was my best position.
Fleet feet were my secret weapon, largely because I, along with most of the other kids in town, went barefoot beginning on the first balmy day of springtime.
I was really good at going barefoot.
The farm kids, traditionally strongest of us all (child labor laws did not apply to family farms) had to wear boots because of what they were stepping in all day. But except for classes or formal occasions I spent roughly half the year barefoot. As a result, my feet were like leather on the bottom by April. Cinder tracks for Field Day relay races? No problem. Don’t believe those depictions of Hermes in sandals; bare feet can be a superpower.
When I got around to raising my own children, shoes were definitely in, and running was not yet. Well into the 1960s, if you’d been seen running around the neighborhood, by now I was in another small town near Atlanta, everyone would assume you had just robbed a bank. Or forgotten to turn the stove burner off. I kept up a passable tennis game, and team-sport skills served me well when the parents played the soccer kids. (The kids still always won.) I biked to freelance jobs; that was no fun.
Suddenly, beginning in the 1970s, running became A Thing. Hallelujah!
By now my children were looking at colleges, I was juggling several careers, my marriage was unraveling and life seemed to be coming at me with three questions for every answer. The search for answers began when, no longer barefoot, I laced up my sneakers and took off running.
In those early days of the running craze, it was possible to find a 5k or 10k neighborhood run every weekend, everywhere, rain or shine. There were fundraisers for nonprofits, celebrations of obscure holidays or just get-together excuses. We ran for T-shirts or free pizzas or occasional awards. It took a while for women and girls to turn out; I was in my early 40s when I took home an engraved plaque declaring me Oldest Female Finisher.
And again, running was my salvation.
The problems that seemed hopeless at 3 AM could dissolve into possible solutions while jogging around leafy streets at dawn. We formed running groups of friends who turned into supporters. I wrote my best articles in my head, ready to type on return.
I did not turn into a great winner (other than the Oldest Female Finisher and a few red ribbons) but running helped me win other battles. Several of them coalesced into my first Bay to Breakers race. In 1992, having won, or at least survived, a few of the dark-days problems cited above, I began a new life in a new marriage in a new city, San Francisco.
How about all those people behind #33911? Even if they’re mostly walking (Author photo)
Before leaving I had contracted to write a magazine article comparing the Peachtree Road Race, then featuring a lot of crazies, to the Bay to Breakers, featuring certified crazies by the dozens. Feeling duty bound to complete the race although I had not trained a single day, I pulled on a pair of worn, comfy sneakers and set out to walk it.
It could not be done.
At every other corner were singers and dancers, cheering (drinking) people, jazz bands and throbbing music. It was impossible not to dance — and run. After starting at the back of the mostly-walker crowd I broke out running whenever the route was not straight uphill. My knees were in revolt for the next three weeks, but I got the story in on time.
Speaking of hills. San Francisco quickly reduced me to a walker. Partly because my new home city was too beautiful to learn at a running pace and partly because very few consecutive blocks don’t involve mini-mountains, my running career ground to a stop. It stayed dormant while I traveled the globe with the excellent Final Husband, while I went back to school for an MFA and generally lived a blissfully happy life.
Suddenly I had passed my 70th birthday.
One day I woke up thinking everybody should run a marathon before turning 75, and I had never run a marathon. So I filled out the forms for the Nike Women’s with its Tiffany gold necklace prize, talked my daughters into joining me and began training (the three of us plus one young friend all in different states.)
I rediscovered the sheer joy of fast-paced movement and quickly remembered the benefit all those endorphins brought. Even doing the hills — I trained on segments of the planned route — brought back the old exhilaration. Clear head, clear thoughts, or sometimes no thoughts at all.
Four months into my marathon training a lump in my breast brought plans to a screeching halt. Instead of going on a training run I was being wheeled into surgery. It was mid-February.
That was the bad news. The good news was that no cancer cells were found in my lymph nodes, so I skipped radiation and the bad chemo, and went straight to the mild and manageable Tamoxifen.
By mid-March, my racing partners were reaching their projected times. I was feeling like a slug.
Until one morning when my husband said, casually, “I wonder if being lopsided would affect your running gait.” Which started me thinking about the gold necklace again, and the fact that the race was still more than two months off.
I traded a few messages with the race people, who assured me it would not be called cheating, under the circumstances, if I wimped back to a half-marathon. And more importantly, I could still have the necklace. Besides, it was paid for, and I am basically cheap.
I went back to training. There were always others doing the same thing. I got more than a few strange glances, the little old lady loping up and down the hills? Mostly I got thumbs-up signs.
Perseverance pays. By the time we four members of Team Gran assembled for dinner the night before the race we were equally pumped, if unequally prepared. Plus, the matching T-shirts had arrived on time.
#3911 nearing the finish line ahead of a clearly unhappy #3855 (Author photo)
The race, my first and last marathon, began on a chilly morning that quickly turned into a brilliant San Francisco day. I ran for some of the route, jogged other sections and walked a few uphills. People passed me — a lot of people passed me — often shouting words of encouragement, sometimes asking how old I was. My husband, who knew this town like the back of his hand, would pop up at unexpected places holding “Go, Team Gran” signs for us. (The team ran the first few yards together and then split into our respective time-slots.)
This is the best possible way to end a race: When I got to the half-marathon exit I felt like I could’ve gone on for miles. I still had sense enough to know I wouldn’t have made it to the end. The word ‘cancer’ had never crossed my mind.
At the pre-arranged meeting spot we four eventually picked up our formal certificates, the swag bag and the coveted Tiffany gold.
That necklace, the Oldest Female Finisher plaque and a few dozen ribbons, certificates and T-shirts have slowly disappeared.
I walk the city hills now, two or three miles of them on most days, but no longer break into a run for fear of breaking something else. But the pure delight, the thrill of spotting unexpected beauty, the clarity that fresh air brings, the joy of motion . . .
