California Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

America Collection/California/Environment/General interest

October 26, 2021October 27, 2021

The Joy of Walking in the Rain

person standing on sidewalk — *Josh Wilburne on Unsplash*

A walk in the rain! Among all glorious, inspirational, free things to do, I rank walking in the rain somewhere close to the top. I am admittedly a walking-in-the- rain nut; I don’t remember a time when sloshing along wet street and pathways, watching the ever-changing reflections, blinking away the water in my face wasn’t all-out delight.

Well okay, maybe not Hurricane Ida. There are differences between walking in the rain and trying to stay upright in a hurricane. As it happened, I arrived in Manhattan last September at the exact same moment as did Hurricane Ida. There being nowhere in the place I was staying to get anything at all for dinner – and because I just never turn on TV sets – I struck out in search of a pastrami reuben. Not smart. My 120-pound self was no match for THAT rain, and I barely made it back to the lobby and the streaming admonitions everywhere: Take Shelter. Stay Indoors. Stay Away From Windows. But I scored a pastrami reuben from one not-yet-closed shop. Walking in hurricanes and deluges is, for the most part, outside the scope of this essay.

*The author preparing for a walk in her Do Not Hit Little Old Lady raincoat*

Walking in today’s rains, if you’ve lasted through the parched months of the American west, is somewhat of a sacred experience: heightened rain appreciation. The trees drip heavenly mist. Delicately-scented moisture cocoons you. What can I say?

Nearing Rain Time recently, my friend Bob Dodge, who lives a few miles south in Portola Valley, began to despair. Downpours were predicted, but he waited throughout the night “for the sound of rain dripping from the oak leaves outside our bedroom window. Silence. I got up at right around 7:00, looking out to see overcast skies but no rain falling from those clouds. 8:00 came and San Francisco was hidden from view but the walkways were still dry . . . Where is the promised rain?!?” He thought first it might be that his fancy rain gauge on the roof was in the wrong spot, “but I am no longer allowed to go up on the roof of the house due to my advancing age.” At last report he was looking for volunteers to climb up onto the roof and move the rain gauge.

I have now checked in once more with the Portola Valley Rainman.

“The rains arrived in sheets and torrents and lasted for what seemed endless hours. Our total rainfall was about 8 inches, almost the total rainfall for the winter behind us,” he replied. I thought, knowing my reporter from the south pretty well, that he would have been out sploshing in puddles for sure.

“Alas, I did not walk in the rain. But I did walk this morning in Lake Dodge, which appeared on our garage roof during the storm. The primary drain was clogged with leaves and other debris and needed to be opened up else the whole roof might collapse. So this 85 year older got out the ladder, informed his wife of his intentions and climbed up to do his job as he has done for the past 51 years at this location. Mission accomplished. Ladder put away. Rubber boots removed and stored again. Back inside to refill my coffee cup before sitting down with my latest book. Life is good.”

The joy of rain, reconfirmed.

California/Covid Collection/General interest/Holidays/Lifestyle

July 5, 2021October 19, 2021

New Year’s Day in July

by Fran Johns

My friend M reports losing five pounds since starting a new weight loss/mindfulness program. The next door neighbor is training for a marathon in the fall. Actually, I’m signed up to do the (virtual) Rabun Ramble 5K, having plotted an acceptable route in San Francisco not quite as challenging as the real Ramble’s North Georgia hills, but who’s checking? Liz, one of my longtime best friends, is working with an editor on the memoir that many of us, not just her family, have been pushing her to do for years.

You’d think it was New Year’s.

Actually, that seems to be where we are: at the beginning of a new year, a new age. What kind of an age it will be is still anybody’s guess, as is how long it might be until we’re officially in it. All those unvaccinated people out there are sitting ducks for the coronavirus still roaming the country, and who knows how many variants are planning coming-out parties with their antecedents’ approval. It’s hard not to be grumpy about the unvaccinated. Granted, everyone has the right to choose not to be vaccinated, I suppose, but thank heaven for the millions who did get the vaccine and thereby made it possible for this New Year’s Day to dawn. Maybe some day the unvaccinated will at least find it in their hearts to appreciate the vaccinated.

Those of us who have been trying to keep the literal faith throughout these dark months, with a little help from Zoom and Facebook and YouTube, have found that being back in churches and synagogues is particularly celebratory. This writer’s return to the Presbyterian pews coincided with Pride Week and couldn’t have been more rainbow-filled. We were even singing from behind our masks – with the blessing (or approval, at least) of the City of San Francisco.

And then there is the indoor dining-out business. Friends of mine on both coasts are absolutely giddy about discovering old restaurants feared long gone, along with new eateries popping up all over the place. In San Francisco, to the dismay of parking space seekers and absolutely no one else, parklet dining – the street spaces taken over by beleaguered restaurants during the pandemic – seems here to stay. But being able to sit inside a quiet (OK, more often noisy) restaurant and enjoy a meal without the accompaniment of traffic noise feels like a new day indeed. “Restaurant X is back!” as the subject head of a Facebook or Twitter thread suddenly morphs into a list too long to comprehend as one friend after another adds one returned eatery after another.

New Year’s Day, of course, seldom dawns without some residual hint of New Year’s Eve and the old year behind. This old one left us with a lion’s share of hangovers: friends and loved ones taken by the virus, personal and congregate losses too many to count, an entire year of suspended existence. But here’s a pearl of wisdom dropped by a very wise friend in a recent Sunday sermon: “Happiness is to joy as whining is to lament.” Work on that one if you want.

Meanwhile, here’s to the happiest of New Years for M, for Liz, and all the rest of us.

America Collection/Arts/California/Celebrities/General interest/Lifestyle

February 7, 2020October 7, 2021

My Little Corner of Black History Month

by Fran Johns

In celebration of Black History Month, this space would like to share a couple of personal encounters with the Arts and Literary history of African Americana. Just because.

Art first. Soon after I arrived in San Francisco, there was a gallery show of the work of Benny Andrews. Benny Andrews was just my #1 all-time favorite African American artist, thanks to having first encountered his work in my undergraduate days (R-MWC 1953, BA, Art.) As we entered the gallery my new husband Bud grabbed my hand and said, “C’mon, I want to introduce you to Benny.” Well, I knew Bud knew everybody, especially every artist alive, but personally? He had gotten hooked on art in one class during his own senior undergraduate year (Albion, 1951, BA Economics & Political Science) and since then had spent every spare moment hanging out at galleries and museums. But Benny Andrews? Could he really know Benny Andrews? And more to the point, could I possibly do anything but gush embarrassingly in front of a famous person who happened to be my #1 all-time African American artist hero? I went into panic mode. There were a LOT of people milling around looking at beautiful paintings; bunches of them were gathered around the artist. I tried to think of something intelligent I might say, but it wasn’t happening.

Benny Andrews drawing — *“The Guitar Picker” (With apologies for photographer’s ghost)*

Meanwhile, my good husband, all 6’4” of him, was plowing ahead, aiming straight toward Benny Andrews, with me in tow. There was no escape, and my brain was on freeze. In a matter of moments we were standing face to face. Briefly acknowledging Bud, Benny reached out and gave me a giant hug. And said, “Aren’t you darlin’ to come see my pictures!”

Sometime later we were able to buy his utterly beautiful pencil drawing “The Guitar Picker.” It’s now at the National Gallery in D.C. But just thinking about it makes me smile, and remember that gentle, kind, incredibly gifted man saying “Aren’t you darlin’ to come see my pictures.”

My other famous artist story has to do with my #1 all-time favorite living African American artist, Radcliffe Bailey. Met him in real time, after admiring his work at Atlanta’s High Museum (and elsewhere) for years, when he turned up at a milestone birthday party in California for my friend Liz Campbell Moskowitz (no slouch of an artist herself.) She introduced us offhandedly, and I said, with something less than socially acceptable composure, “OMG! You’re Radcliffe Bailey!?! I love your work! That room of your paintings is the first place I go when I’m at the High!” He was polite about my effusion, though.

Fran w Radcliffe Bailey 2.16.19 — *Radcliffe Bailey & me*

This was a couple of years before he married Leslie, daughter of Liz and the renowned photographer Gordon Parks. I think I’m unlikely to top those two encounters any time soon.

As for the Literature area.

In the late 1960s, Bud (whom I would marry in 1992 but with whom I was not then in contact) owned a house at 2777 Pine Street in San Francisco. A graceful Victorian built in the 1870s, it sold a few years ago for three or four million – but in 1968 the neighborhood was not one you’d wander around without risking bodily harm. Bud lived in the ground-floor apartment, and rented the main house to Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver. At the time, Black Panther leader Eldridge was out on bail following an attempted murder charge. He would eventually skip the country and later return, find religion, design provocative menswear, become a Mormon, struggle with cocaine addiction and die at age 62 in 1998. That was 30 years after he’d been Bud’s tenant. “I had no problems with the neighborhood,” my husband used to say of that time; “either the cops or the Black Panthers were there at any given time; usually both.”

Kathleen Cleaver (who had answered the For Rent ad and signed the lease) would go on to earn a J.D. from Yale Law School and eventually become a distinguished lecturer at Yale and at Emory University. But between her tenancy on Pine Street and her later career she joined Eldridge in exile in Algeria, and became the mother of two. On Pine Street, she handled the family finances. Because they were chancy at best, the rent seldom arrived on time. (When the Cleavers skipped town they were two months in arrears. So my husband went to the Black Panther headquarters in Oakland and said he’d like to have his rent. You did what? he was asked. “I said I wanted two months rent. They paid.”)

Cleaver letter — *(More apologies for another photographer-ghost)*

When cleaning out our safe deposit box recently I found the letter at right. The letterhead is that of Ramparts, a radical publication for which Kathleen Cleaver wrote. I’d known of the letter’s existence; my husband included it in a story he once wrote, and had offered it to several museums but gotten no response. So I mentioned finding it to my daughter and said I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. “Frame it, Mom,” she said. Thus the document shown here. It reads:

Mr. Johns:

Please excuse the delay but I have been so god damned busy with these pigs and courts and chaos that I completely forgot to pay the rent. You are so very sweet to be so unobtrusive and gentle with me. I think you are the perfect landlord and I would just like to warn you that you should prepare yourself for any day now some kind of assault on this house. I think it is beautiful, I love it, I won’t go away, but the local, federal, international, secret and off duty pigs as well as reagon (sic,) rafferty, shelton, wallace, alioto, et al want to do us in, Eldridge first, then me.

Here’s the rent.

Peace, Mrs. Cleaver

America Collection/California/courts/General interest/Media/Politicians/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA

August 26, 2018October 7, 2021

Journey to Justice: 1300 Miles by Bicycle

by Fran Johns

DreamRider group — Jung Woo Kim and some of his fellow Dream Riders

Their stories are about growing up in immigrant families, with parents working long hours six and seven days a week and very young siblings resolutely looking after each other. But their focus is on the future – a better future for people everywhere. Humankind.

A dozen young immigrants – Dream Riders – are sharing their stories, and their hopes for the future, as they bike from Seattle to San Diego on a Journey to Justice, part of the Citizenship for All campaign. The support van traveling with them carries the usual – First Aid supplies, water, energy bars – and one not so usual essential: a lawyer. That’s because eight of the riders do not currently have legal status and their route is filled with pitfalls like immigration checkpoints. If they’re stopped they follow this protocol: Keep calm and quiet. Don’t consent to being searched. Call the lawyer.

DreamRider Bo Thai — Dream Rider “Bo Thai” talks of hazards & inspiration

The group stopped by Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco recently for breakfast and a brief press conference. Hearing their stories, and the stories of some supporters, was a reminder of how lucky America is to be a nation of immigrants – especially with immigrants like these still wanting to become citizens despite the hurdles and hostility they face.

Mi Jin Park, currently protected by DACA, spoke eloquently of being at school with her brother when they were 5 and 7, in a crowd of children waiting for permission to leave with their parents. Park would tell the teacher in charge that she and her brother had to meet their mother on the corner – and then the two would run all the way home, to their tiny apartment in a sometimes scary neighborhood. They would lock the door and look after each other. Her brother would constantly call the nail salon where their mother worked long hours six days a week, just to hear her voice and ask when she would be home. “When I think of those immigrant children now being separated from their parents at the border . . .” Park began . . . but she couldn’t finish the sentence.

DreamRiders-Joann — Calvary Pastor Joann Lee welcomes the Dream Riders

Some of the Dream Riders and their supporters entered the U.S. via harrowing journeys through deserts or wading across the Rio Grande river in the middle of the night. Some came long ago on tourist visas and simply stayed. It was very hard to meet these bright, funny, energetic young people and go home to PBS NewsHour’s report of the latest characterization of “illegal aliens” by some leaders of our country.

The Dream Riders are being sponsored by NAKASEC (the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium,) HANA Center, nd the Korean Resource Center. Any of them would welcome your support.

What do they want? Just a chance to live freely and to contribute to their community. (NAKASEC works for, among other things, Youth Empowerment, Education Access and Adoptee Rights.) What precepts do they follow? Live Right, Know Your Roots, Live Strong, Live Together.

The framers of the Constitution couldn’t have put it better,

America Collection/Arts/California/General interest/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA

June 18, 2017October 7, 2021

Art & the Protection of Democracy

by Fran Johns

Ward show w Fran — Schumaker with the writer

Ward Schumaker and Vivienne Flesher, two San Francisco-based, nationally recognized artists whom this writer is proud to call friends, have been fighting depression – to put it mildly – since last November. It is of course political – everything’s political these days – but for Schumaker and Flesher (who are in fact married to each other,) it’s about much more than politics. It’s about human rights, the future of the planet their 9-year-old grandson will inherit, and protection of our democracy.

I met Schumaker shortly before the closing of his latest show at San Francisco’s Jack Fischer Gallery, for a brief talk about art and activism. (Sorry if you missed the show. You can still see his work at Fischer’s Potrero Street Gallery.) Does creating art help them deal with depression, I wondered?

“No. It’s just hard. But it’s what we do: get up in the morning, every day, and go to work at 8 AM.” Some extraordinary examples of Schumaker’s work were assembled for the latest show – creating them took about a year and a half, not all of which time was clouded in depression. My personal favorite is a piece titled “The cloud of unknowing.” Schumaker conceived the piece as a meditation, referencing the ancient (late 14^th century) work of mysticism which suggests that contemplative prayer might lead to an understanding of the nature of God.

To mitigate their depression, however, Schumaker and Flesher are doing a little more than painting. They have created an assortment of postcards, some with messages on the front and some just featuring their original artwork. After printing out a stack of cards, they also printed out the names and addresses of every member of Congress, both Senate and House. (You can do the same, by following the links.) They keep these, along with a supply of 34-cent stamps, on their breakfast table, where every morning they enjoy coffee and The New York Times. When they find someone in Congress has done something positive, they send a thank-you postcard. Others get a card expressing disapproval.

Postcards take a little more time than a phone call or email, but are a powerful way to make one’s voice heard. Especially if one is worried about human rights, the future of the planet one’s grandchildren will inherit, and the protection of our democracy.

Plus: this is how democracy is protected.

Authors/California/General interest/Media/Politicians/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA

June 2, 2017June 2, 2017

Facts, Truth & Being Nice to One Another

by Fran Johns

“Critical thinking,” says author Tom Nichols, “is that thing that says ‘Start asking questions. Don’t be afraid of where they go.’ It is okay to change your mind.”

Nichols, who has changed his mind more than once but has never not been a critical thinker, was in San Francisco recently promoting his latest book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. He is more than a little concerned that the acceptance of untruths and outright lies, and the increasing willingness to ignore experts on all subjects, is going to get our democracy into deep trouble.

“There’s been a change,” he says, “from ‘I doubt you; explain.’ to ‘I know more than you do.’”

Tom Nichols & Melissa Caen 5.24.17 — Tom Nichols & interviewer Melissa Caen

Nichols is unquestionably an expert himself – a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, at the Harvard Extension School, a Sovietologist, and a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion (among a long list of other credentials on his Wikipedia page) – and sees many reasons for the death of expertise. A virtual epidemic of narcissism, for one; technology in many of its uses and abuses for another. But the danger of the “collapse of expertise,” he says, is that it can easily lead to mob rule. And poof, there goes democracy. Nichols is concerned, as he writes in The Death of Expertise, that “Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.”

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was also in town recently, talking a good bit about facts and truth herself. Unsurprisingly, Pelosi feels there is not much respect for either in the present administration. She opened her remarks with a report on President Trump’s first meeting with congressional leaders. “The first thing the president said was, ‘Do you know I won the popular vote?’ Now first, that wasn’t relevant to what we were there for. And it wasn’t true.”

Nancy Pelosi & Scott Shafer 5.30.17 — Pelosi with interviewer Scott Shafer of KQED

Pelosi repeatedly said she felt things could get done, including on many issues that would require cooperation between Democrats and Republicans. “But we have to start with facts. Data. Truth.”

Nichols says the best way to get the facts – “the real story” – is to read multiple sources. (“I read the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.”) And to those who would say, “I don’t have time,” Nichols has one answer: “Yes. You. Do.”

If the issues and the problems are complex, Nichols suggests that part of the answer is sublimely simple: “We have to be nicer,” he says. “We have to believe we want the best for each other.”

That has, in a not-so-distant past still fondly recalled by more than a few Americans, been true.

California/economics/General interest/Lifestyle/Politicians/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA/World Affairs

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017

Vicente Fox. Has. Opinions

by Fran Johns

Vicente Fox is not shy with his opinions.

During a recent event at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club the former president of Mexico (2000-2006) shared his thoughts on border walls, immigration, the global economy and Donald Trump. None of these would be pleasing to Mr. Trump – nor would they come as any surprise, since the two men regularly tweet insults at each other.

In advance of a conversation with Commonwealth Club CEO Gloria Duffy, Fox strode onstage and entertained his audience – which seemed not to include many Trump supporters – with a 30-minute, statistics-filled, no-notes commentary on the world in general and U.S./Mexico relations in particular.

As to that latter, “After years of democracy, friendship and cooperation, your leader says ‘Wait a minute! We have to build a wall!’” This, Fox maintains, is a very bad idea. “You are perhaps shooting yourself with a gun in the foot. Attacking ourselves in a trade war? Crazy.” Fox suggests that successful relationships between neighbor countries are built on “love, compassion, diplomacy and democratic dialogue.” The trade war now seeming likely will benefit neither, he believes.

And as to the wall? “It’s going to take 35 billion U.S. dollars to build the wall. With that $35 billion you can create 10 million jobs. China built a wall, at great sacrifice. Paid for it with their own money. To protect against the Mongols and the Manchu. What happened? China was invaded by the Mongols and the Manchu. Berlin? They built a wall to keep freedom out.” Fox is not enthusiastic about walls.

Immigration? “We don’t want any more invasions by gringos.” Fox suggests that the problem of illegal immigration into the U.S. might better be addressed by spending that $35 billion on “going to the heart of the problem, in Central America,” where desperate situations in more than a few countries are forcing desperate people to attempt to enter the U.S. through Mexico.

This writer lays no claim to expertise on Mexican politics or political history. (Two Mexican friends, when asked, allowed as how they felt Mr. Fox got very rich during his presidency but didn’t do a lot for their poor communities.) But former president Fox, movie-star handsome, charmingly funny and a man who thinks the world would be better off if women were in charge? What’s not to love?

Vicente Fox.3 — With Commonwealth Club CEO Gloria Duffy

Fox, in his Commonwealth Club appearance, referred more than once to the Dalai Lama’s assertion that the world belongs to humanity. “That means all 8 billion of us,” he says. (A tiny exaggeration, though checking the world population clock is both fascinating and scary.) Among Fox’s strongest current opinions is that his non-friend Donald Trump spends too much time talking about withdrawing his country from the world, protecting its citizens, building walls, making America great. Fox suggested to his San Francisco audience that he had a response to this:

“I have decided to name myself – humbly – head of a shadow government representing the world,” Vicente Fox quips, “to say to your president — — — ‘What about us??’”

Worth thinking about.

California/General interest/Media/Politicians/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA

March 5, 2017

Trump’s first 100 days of chaos

by Fran Johns

“We only seek to find the truth and set it free,” reads the slogan of the nonpartisan public affairs forum, San Francisco-based Commonwealth Club. Before the Club moved to temporary headquarters, en route to its brand new offices which are set to open sometime this year, I always loved riding the elevator to the meeting rooms – and reading that message in large script on the entry wall.

Today, finding the truth is a tall order.

Warning: This is a political column. Despite my avowed intention to stay out of politics until there is at least a ray of hope somewhere, politics just won’t go away.

Recently the Commonwealth Club hosted a program titled “Trump’s First 100 Days: Part One.” Panelists included two women: Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of the SF Bay Area Council on American-Islamic Relations (a US-born citizen); and retired CA Supreme Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, Chair, Santa Clara Jail Commission (and the great-granddaughter of slaves, she mentioned at one point.) They were two impressive citizens. This writer would have been happy to spend an hour listening to their understandings and perspectives.

Also on the panel were two white male gentlemen who dominated (unless the Moderator intervened) the conversation: Steven Fish, Professor of Political Science, University of California Berkeley, and Sean Walsh, GOP Political Strategist.

Riding herd on this well-informed, and certainly passionate about their positions, quartet was Scott Shafer, Senior Editor, California Politics & Government, KQED – which is partnering with the Commonwealth Club on these programs.

If I were covering this extremely interesting event for a non-fake news outlet, it could be effectively done in about 10,000 words. Instead, I offer here the excerpted (wildly condensed) responses each panelist had to Shafer’s opening question: In this bizarre beginning – it was 38 days in when this program aired – to the Trump presidency, “what jumps out at you?”

Steven Fish: “It is not clear that the president of the United States is completely loyal to his own country, or the ideals of democracy.”

Judge Cordell: “We should be talking about the first 100 lies.” (She expounded on that at some length, and with clear, concise accuracy, ticking off the lie and the truth.)

Samara Billoo: “There is a sense of fear in my community,” spurred by “racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic” messages coming from the White House and its Republican allies.

Sean Walsh: “He does not have his advisers, transition people, in place. He (our president) is in the process of putting his administration in place.”

Shafer: “Chaos.”

It’s going to be a long 100 days, and then some.