San Francisco Archives - Page 7 of 10

Family and Friends/General interest/Holidays/Lifestyle/Religion/San Francisco

June 11, 2016June 13, 2016

A Ramadan Birthday Dinner

Ramadan - dinner crowd

Dates, rice and eggplant moussaka for birthday dinner? It works.

A recent birthday of mine happened to coincide with a long-planned Ramadan Interfaith Iftar Dinner co-hosted by Pacifica Institute and Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Since I was minimally involved in the planning and execution of the event, and maximally involved in the birthday, it made sense to combine the two. Plus, I got a lot of mileage out of responding to questions about birthday plans with news we were expecting 225 or so friends for dinner.

The eventual total number of guests will remain a mystery, because so many kept showing up without reservations and we were simply told not to turn anyone away. Attendees were Muslim and non-Muslim, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Buddhists. (“You know the difference between a Buddhist and a non-Buddhist?” quipped Rev. Ron Kobata of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco; “The non-Buddhist thinks there is a difference.”)

This was not just a celebratory dinner, it was an Iftar dinner, the sunset meal at which Muslims break the fast they have observed since sunrise. To be clear about it, sunrise on June 8^th in San Francisco was at 5:48 AM, and sunset was at 8:37. That is considerably longer than this weak-willed Christian generally goes without sustenance. Having had a perfectly good lunch, and swiped a half-dozen or so dates while putting bowls on the tables, I still had to sneak a glass of milk from the kitchen to keep from fainting away at the welcome table.

Given that dinner would not be served until after the call to prayer at 8:37, the program preceded the meal. It included a video about Pacifica Institute, which was founded in 2003 by a group of Turkish Muslims dedicated to social justice, interfaith cooperation, relationship-building and partnership for the common good – any tiny advancement of which would make a pretty fine birthday present for anybody. Pacifica is aligned with the worldwide Hizmet Movement (“the Service”) which promotes service to humanity regardless of faith, tradition, gender or ethnicity.

Fatih Ferdi Ates giving the call to prayer

We also saw a video about how fasting strengthens one’s spirituality in multiple ways. Muslims observe the fast – abstaining from food, drink, smoking, sexual activity and bad behavior including lying or cursing – every day during the month of Ramadan; which does not exactly compare with giving up chocolate for Lent.

Keynote speaker Dr. Scott Alexander, Assistant Professor of Muslim Studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, spoke to the evening’s theme: The Art of Living Together. “Sharing the joy of fasting,” he said, “fills us all with hope. It stands in opposition to the strident voices of hatred that want us to believe our troubles are the fault of others.” Alexander ended with a prayer that “God will allow others different from ourselves in all ways to touch our hearts.”

One of the co-leaders of the event, who served as MC along with Pacifica Institute’s Fatih Ferdi Ates, was Calvary member Robin Morjikian, whose father is Armenian. Ates, when thanking her, noted that the evening involved the daughter of an Armenian working with a group of Turkish Muslims on an event held at a Presbyterian church and featuring a keynote speech by a professor from a Catholic University. Buddhist Rev. Kobata presented awards to three honorees.

In lieu of birthday cake, dessert consisted of mixed fruit and baklava. I’m not sure how next year’s birthday will stack up.

General interest/journalism/San Francisco/seniors

June 6, 2016

Windows 10: A Horror Story

by Fran Johns

laptop computer crash

If you work on a PC that’s been around since last summer or longer, you know the relentless, obnoxious, uninvited pop-up boxes urging you to upgrade to Windows 10. Its hype has been such that you’d think Windows 10 includes an app for getting the Israelis talking to the Palestinians.

Downloader beware.

The upgrade message assures you that all of your files will be just where you left them. It’s easy, convenient, and free for a limited time! Plus, if you don’t like it, Windows 10 creates recovery files that allow you to roll back to your previous operating system any time within 30 days. Don’t believe it.

I wonder what in the world is in this good free deal for Microsoft? Could it perhaps translate into big bucks for Microsoft; i.e. Bill Gates and a few key employees and investors?

Windows 10 has its fans. Three of them are smart, computer-literate friends of mine who (along with several others) convinced me it would be wise to upgrade. Because, they argued, Microsoft will be discontinuing support for my old familiar Windows 7, and unless I upgrade I will miss out on ongoing security measures, etc.

Here is my experience. It is admittedly anecdotal, but throughout the past hellish week nearly a dozen friends have shared their own Windows 10 horror stories, including two who said it was downloaded without their request or consent. (Occasional pop-ups say Windows 10 will be installed in X-number of hours, and unless you catch it and specifically decline by checking three different boxes, it’s a done deal.) I admit to voluntarily signing on.

So at 2 AM on a recent Tuesday morning Windows 10 was downloaded onto my beloved four-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad laptop. At approximately 8 AM I entered digital purgatory.

For a few brief moments I enjoyed the crisp new look. Then I realized I could not access the two critical elements of computerdom on which my day depends: email, and Word documents. Not to worry. I’m only a few minutes away from the charming and super-capable Geek Squad folks at a nearby electronics place. I hereby salute & applaud my local Geek Squad. It took several exhausting hours – mainly because I tried to work with someone in Bangladesh who couldn’t restore my email – but the Geeks found my Word documents and a way I could send & receive email, even if files, address book etc were lost in cyberspace.

Two hours later it was all gone. Windows 10 was back in control, and denying access to anything. The next two days were essentially devoted to repeated trips to the Microsoft Store, where assorted other charming and super-capable geek types attempted to get Windows 10 the heck off of my weary laptop and roll things back to Windows 7. They could not. The only thing that eventually saved my life and laptop was a long ago purchase (and thank heavens for the auto-renew!) of Carbonite, which kept a copy of everything on my computer somewhere in its mysterious cloud. It took two straight days, but eventually I was back to where I was before the nightmare started.

Here is what Microsoft doesn’t tell you:

Your computer may NOT be compatible with Windows 10.

If you attempt to upgrade using the link furnished with the ubiquitous pop-up, the installation may not be “clean.” (This is what happened with my laptop; Windows 10 was sort-of installed, but not properly.) And you cannot simply re-install – or simply anything for that matter. So if you want to join the ranks of the Windows 10 fans, find a safe way to do so. Probably going to a Microsoft Store makes the best sense. The people at my local Microsoft Store were courteous and competent. They also kept bringing me bottles of cold water; I think they feared having a little old lady suffering a heart attack on their hands.

Your files may indeed be exactly where you left them (as you are repeatedly told,) but you may not be able to access them.

If you have a good anti-virus protection, you can get along just fine without whatever new security features my friends feared I would need.

And as for those “recovery files that allow you to roll back to your previous system within 30 days,” don’t count on it. I invested $149 in a package deal at the Microsoft Store so this could be done, but after two agonizing days of repeated trips we all conceded that the only hope was in the Carbonite cloud. If you really want to preserve the option of rolling back to your previous system, put every single piece of it into a cloud or onto a few flash drives.

Or buy a new PC and start from scratch. This I am doing with the nifty little Asus tablet the Microsoft Store folks set me up with so I could work during Hell Week. Of course by the end of the week I was loving it, so am spending the $300 to keep it for traveling. But I don’t expect to be able to do anything but the most rudimentary tasks on it for a very, very long time.

In the meantime I will be studying my brand new, 325-page Windows 10 for Seniors For Dummies. And I’m adding my Asus to my Carbonite account.

Abortion/contraception/Education/Feminist Collection/General interest/Health/Healthcare/Politicians/Politics & Causes/Reproductive rights/San Francisco/teens/USA/Women

May 5, 2016October 8, 2021

There’s Hope for Reproductive Justice

by Fran Johns

Let’s hear it – one more time – for the Millennials. Especially the youngest Millennials, just now reaching or approaching voting age. A generation unto themselves.

Invited to speak at a recent “Awareness into Action” day at Drew School, a private college preparatory day school in San Francisco, this writer went with some trepidation into a classroom set up for about ten high school students. Who – when she hasn’t been a high schooler in more than a half century – knows high school students today?

My workshop was on Reproductive Justice. Other choices the students could make included workshops on Mindfulness, Parks Conservancy, Anti-Racist Dialogue, LGBTQ issues and Immigration Law (to name a few.) I figured if 5 or 6 girls showed up it would be fine. By the time we were ready to start there were 14 girls and two brave (and handsome) guys around the table and sitting on chairs and tables in the back corner, plus one teacher keeping an eye on it all.

For openers, I’d written several facts on the whiteboard:

A woman dies of cervical cancer almost once every two hours. HPV vaccine prevents most cases of cervical cancer.

17 states mandate that women be given counseling before an abortion that includes information on at least one of the following: the purported link between abortion and breast cancer (5 states); the ability of a fetus to feel pain (12 states); long-term mental health consequences of abortion for the woman (7 states.) None of the above are true.

Then I told my own story. The story of a 22-year-old who had never had sex – after all, nice girls did not have sex before marriage in 1956. A victim of what would today clearly be workplace rape, I did all the dangerous things that women desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy are increasingly doing today. When nothing else worked, I had a back alley abortion by an untrained man who probably had not even washed his hands.

“I think,” I said to the roomful of attentive faces, “we’re going straight back to the dark ages.”

Not if these young people have anything to say about it.

Aware that they are among the lucky ones, they are concerned about the unlucky. They seemed a little taken aback by statistics like this one:

In 2006, 49% of pregnancies were unintended. The proportion of unintended pregnancies was highest (98%) among teens younger than 15.

. . . and by other data about how widespread is the denial of access to reproductive healthcare for poor women and girls (and men and boys) in more than half of the U.S. “It’s just wrong,” said one student.

So what do you think you can do to change things, I asked.

“Vote,” came the first answer, before I even finished the question.

“We have to learn to listen to people we disagree with,” said another student, who had been rather vocal in her description of political villains. “You may have to bite your tongue,” I said. “Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Because we have to learn how to have dialogue.”

“We just have to know the laws,” said another, “and work to change them.”

“We need to support these organizations, too,” commented another student, tapping the table with some of the materials I had distributed from groups like Advocates for Youth, Planned Parenthood and Sea Change.

For this writer, who lived through the worst of times, the workshop brought hope for the future of reproductive justice in the U.S. Returning to the worst of times is not on the agenda for these Millennials.

Authors/Feminist Collection/journalism/Literature/San Francisco/Women

April 17, 2016October 7, 2021

Anna Quindlen on form & feminism

by Fran Johns

Anna Quindlen, on tour with her new novel Miller’s Valley, sat down for a rollicking interview with author Kelly Corrigan recently at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. Within an hour they had traded profound thoughts and raucous asides – some printable and some not – on topics ranging from literary form to family histories to feminism, from death & dying to the prosecution of rapists.

A few random excerpts:

Re Miller’s Valley – which reviewers have described as “a quintessential small town story about a family you will never forget” – Quindlen said she felt early on that she wanted it to be written in the first person (Mimi, who grows from an 11-year-old into her sixties in the book, is the narrator) because she wanted to leave “some ambiguity at the end, and that’s only possible with a first person narrator. There is a kind of intimacy you can only develop through the first person.”

On how much of Miller’s Valley – and her seven earlier novels – is taken from her own life: “When I was a newspaper reporter people thought I made things up. Now I make things up and people think they’re real.”

On families, literary and otherwise: Corrigan, noting Quindlen’s untroubled childhood and long-lasting, happy marriage, asked if “people who have not lived through deep dysfunction” can still produce great writing. “I had a happy childhood,”Quindlen responded, “but I remember always feeling that there was no place for me in the world.” Then she listed three things that have made her the (highly acclaimed) writer she is: her mother’s illness and death – Quindlen, the eldest of five siblings, left college in her sophomore year to care for her cancer-stricken mother – the “good luck to be a street reporter in New York City,” and being a mom to her three now-grown children.

Corrigan followed with a family tale of her own. After calling her mother to tell her about an award just received, Corrigan was dismayed by her mother’s being “not very impressed.” So after a few moments of disappointment she called back to find out why. Her mother said, “I’m glad you called back. I’m jealous.” To which Quindlen added, “We all said, ‘I don’t want the kind of life my mother had.’”

Quindlen 4.11.16

On memoir (both authors have produced well-received memoirs) v fiction: “In memoirs there is stuff you can’t talk about,” Corrigan commented, “like jealousies, or sex with your husband. But in fiction we can be more honest about what hangs us up.”

“How’s feminism going?” Corrigan asked toward the end of the conversation. “We (feminists) are, like God, everywhere,” Quindlen replied. Concerning one major issue of the feminist movement, Corrigan mentioned data that “reported rapes are up.” Possibly, she added, because for so long rapes went unreported.” But Quindlen noted ruefully that “fairly recently, in New York, you couldn’t prosecute without a third party witness. “Someone had to walk in during the event, preferably a nun or a policeman.”

Asked to name her favorite rising feminist, Quiundlen paused only briefly before saying “Lena Dunham. She immediately used her fame to help others. Every book event she does is tied to the local Planned Parenthood.” Citing the oft-repeated feminist mantra Learn, Earn, Return, Quindlen said Dunham “is doing all three at the same time.” And Quindlen couldn’t resist getting in a plug for another woman she admires, “Hillary Rodham, as I like to call her, not using her slave name – is best qualified, and will make a great President.”

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Locations/Optimism Collection/Politics & Causes/Religion/San Francisco/USA

February 21, 2016October 20, 2021

On Jazz, Optimism and World Peace

by Fran Johns

Some of the things in short supply these days: optimism, compassion, comfort and joy and the conviction that light will always overcomes darkness.

Dave Len Scott Photo by Nicholas Wilson-nwilsonphoto.com — Dave Len Scott
Photo by Nicholas Wilson-nwilsonphoto.com

Two San Francisco-based musicians are quietly at work to advance all of the above. Dave Len Scott and Vernon Bush lead multi-pronged lives that are exhausting to consider, but they offer a strong endorsement of the energy that derives from choosing this particular line of work.

Occasionally the two get together to reinforce the notion that faith, hope and love continue to win out.

Scott, who teaches at Sonoma State University, is a trumpet player, pianist, composer, conductor and dispenser of peace and joy. His bio explains that he is “equally comfortable in improvisational/jazz and ensemble/classical idioms.” Bush, noted for his “Inspire Choirs” that are premised on the African proverb, If you can speak you can sing, is a singer, composer and performer who works closely with San Francisco’s historic Glide Memorial Church. He is also co-founder, with Marybeth Tereszkiewicz, of Tree of Life Cross-Cultural Arts Camp, a yearly two to three week summer program for children in the small school communities of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Both Scott and Bush make a respectable living through their art, but what they do essentially for free, for the benefit of their brothers and sisters on the planet, sets them apart from many (happily by no means all!) of their fellow musical professionals.

The two get together occasionally (and will do so regularly throughout the spring of 2016) for “Live at Five” evening services at another San Francisco church, of which this writer is fortunate to be a member. Scott advertises the musical segments of the events thus: “Vernon Bush is a gentle soul and a gifted choir leader. To shine positivity and love is just Vernon’s way. Anyone who comes to sing with Vernon (first Monday of every month, 7 pm) at Calvary will come away feeling better about everything, feeling loved! I am certain!”

Certainty of goodness (and feeling loved) might be added to the things in short supply today. But a recent “Live at Five” service led, musically, by Scott and Bush, featured a chorus-with-drums rendition of this Chinese proverb:

Where there is light in the soul

There is beauty in the person

Where there is beauty in the person

There is harmony in the home

Where there is harmony in the home

There is honor in the nation

Where there is honor in the nation

There is peace in the world.

It may be an unfortunate fact that there is not a lot of peace in the world. But thankfully there are people like Dave Len Scott and Vernon Bush out there bringing light to the soul.

Abortion/contraception/courts/Feminist Collection/General interest/Health/Healthcare/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/Reproductive rights/San Francisco/USA/Women

February 2, 2016October 8, 2021

Women, Abortion Rights & Willie Parker

by Fran Johns

Noted physician/activist Willie Parker was in San Francisco recently explaining why he does what he does.

What Willie Parker does is regularly put his life on the line in behalf of poor women and their reproductive health. Why does he do it? “It’s the right thing to do.” Among other things Parker does is to fly regularly into Jackson, MS to provide abortions at the one remaining clinic where Mississippi women without power or resources can go for this constitutionally-protected health service.

His belief that it would be morally wrong not to help the women who come to him, Parker once told this writer, was rooted partially in a sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on the good Samaritan (who stopped to help a stranger after others had passed him by.) “What made the good Samaritan ‘good’ was that instead of thinking about what might happen if he stopped to help the traveler, he thought about what would happen to the traveler if he didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop to weigh the life of a pre-viable or a lethally flawed fetus against the life of the woman sitting across from me.”

Parker headlined an event celebrating the 43^rd anniversary of Roe v Wade that was organized by Carol Joffe, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health – and which quickly sold out.

“Most (abortion) providers keep a low profile,” Joffe said in her introductory remarks; “but Willie has chosen to be very public. (Despite his multiple degrees and honors, everybody seems to call Dr. Parker ‘Willie.’) He is building bridges to the past and to the future.” Joffe went on to speak of Parker’s connections to progressive causes, faith communities and, most recently to the Black Lives Matter movement. “What he is doing,” she said, “helps all women to live lives of dignity.”

Parker, who treats the issue of personal danger as not worth his time to worry about, calls the anti-abortion efforts “domestic terrorism,” especially with the murder of providers. The incessant efforts to overturn Roe, and passage of more and more unnecessary state laws making abortion inaccessible for women without power or resources are, he maintains, in the same “domestic terrorism” category.

So in return Parker says he tries to “radicalize” every young woman he sees in Mississippi. Since the state mandates he spend time with her, unnecessarily and repeatedly, before allowing her to have the abortion which is her constitutional right, Parker considers it only fair to put that time to best use. “I tell her, ‘these people who are trying to close this clinic – they don’t think you’re smart enough to make your own decisions.’ And I explain change will only happen if she fights for it. Then I tell her to go vote.”

All of which helps explain why Willie Parker does what he does. This writer is among the uncounted others, women and men believing in humanity and justice, who give thanks.

economics/friendships/General interest/Holidays/Lifestyle/Religion/San Francisco

January 18, 2016January 18, 2016

A Memorable MLK Day Celebration

by Fran Johns

MLK on darkness

Dr. King would, I think, have approved.

One celebration of his legacy involved a collaboration between members of a fairly mainline Presbyterian church in an affluent area of San Francisco and members of a soul-spirited Pentecostal church in the city’s Bayview community, where crime and poverty run rampant. The partnership – and friendship – between the two unlikely groups has been growing ever since its beginning in response to the mass shootings at Charleston’s Emanuel African American Methodist Episcopal Church in June of 2015.

For openers, the African American Pentecostal pastor preached (only minimally more reserved and shorter than is his custom) to the mostly white Presbyterians. His message was primarily about the Biblical admonition to welcome the alien and show hospitality to strangers. He also had a few words about justice rolling down like a river, and about Martin Luther King Jr’s assertion that love will overcome racism, materialism and militarism.

MLK Day cable car

After the service some fifty or so Presbyterians boarded motorized cable cars and sang their way across town to the Pentecostal church. There the white pastor preached to the now-multicolor congregation about the Biblical suggestion that nothing much is required of believers other than to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with the Creator. He also had a few words about some of the ads he had noticed on the trip over. Dr. King, he suggested, probably didn’t live, work and die primarily so there would be three-day mattress sales, or a 25% MLK Weekend discount on leather jackets.

During the second service, which another minister termed Presbycostal, there was a generous amount of rousing hallelujah music led by the hosts and several gospel pieces from the visitors, whose choir director and trumpet-playing musician in residence made the trip.

MLK Day Dave & choir

After the second service the hosts surprised their guests with lunch in the adjacent social hall: homemade salads, chips and dips and plates of fried chicken. A dozen or so small children, varying shades of white, brown and black, snagged their fried chicken early and set to entertaining themselves by jumping up and down a stairway below a banner that read “The Audacity to Believe.”

One of the visitors remarked to one of the hostesses, as everyone dispersed, “I think we had a lot more fun than anybody at the weekend sales.”

MLK Day lunch

California/caregiving/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/General interest/geriatrics/Health/Healthcare/Lifestyle/Medicine/physicians/San Francisco/seniors

January 16, 2016October 7, 2021

Dying On Your Own Terms

by Fran Johns

Do Not Resuscitate? Allow Natural Death? Do everything to keep me alive? Whatever happens, I don’t want tubes down my throat! Keep me out of Intensive Care Units!

End-of-life decision-making gets tougher every day.

Dying – that straightforward, universal human experience – now often involves a bewildering assortment of choices and decisions. And most of us are poorly prepared. We have core values (and usually more than a few fears and family histories) that come into play in making end-of –life choices, but too many of us are caught unawares.

At a recent Commonwealth Club of California event Mileva Saulo Lewis, EdD, RN, used a “values history” approach to explain how these difficult decisions are made, and to help audience members walk through the process. “Values history” translates: What matters to you? Why? It was developed at the Center for Medical Ethics and Mediation in San Diego.

“Values,” Lewis explains, “are the criteria by which you make decisions.” They might be rooted in your home and family, your faith community, college or university, workplace or elsewhere, but one’s values underlie all decision-making. And the reason all this matters today, especially with end-of-life decisions, is that medicine and technology have made seismic shifts over the past half century.

Lewis spoke of how the patient/physician relationship, one of these shifts, has moved from the paternalistic, “father knows best” model to what is now often termed “patient-centered” care – shared decision-making. This new model requires patients not only to be well informed, but also to be proactive and to make their values known.

The goals of medicine, Lewis explains, include curing disease, relieving symptoms and suffering, and preventing untimely death. The patient’s part is to make sure the healthcare provider explains and counsels adequately, and respects the patient’s expressed wishes. Ideally, decisions will be made in concert.

Lewis outlined some of the factors to consider in end-of-life decision-making such as how important to you is independence, being able to communicate with others, being pain-free and other end-of-life circumstances that have been frequently discussed in this space. She suggested one tool that has not been mentioned here, and is an excellent aid: the Ottawa Personal Decision Guide. However you make (and record) your personal choices, she stresses the importance of thinking through your values, writing down your wishes and – most important of all – talking it all over with friends, family members and your healthcare provider.

“Know yourself,” Mileva Lewis says. “Communicate. Trust yourself, and your healthcare provider. And be proactive.”

Heeding Lewis’ advice can help protect your values, and insure that your end-of-life wishes are respected.

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