SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED A BREAK FROM THE DAILY CHAOS
One of the stairways at Alamo Square Park (Author photo)
Visitors go to San Francisco’s Alamo Square Park to photograph the Victorian Painted Ladies houses, to gaze at spectacular views of downtown or the surrounding neighborhoods, to picnic or sunbathe or strengthen various muscle groups.
I go to the park to look up. Well, for all those other reasons too — but looking up is what does it for my heart and soul.
Try it.
Just look up. Walking cities, check out the floors above street-level on urban blocks — I learned that in the one college architecture class I had. It’s a way of noticing the building’s history, or figuring out what’s really going on up there, inside.
Or look higher!
(Author photo)
As a committed follower of the Cloud Appreciation Society (Member #45,662,) I have more cloud photos than you want to know about. I’m constantly on the lookout for a potential Cloud-of-the-Day photo that CAS might choose. Lovely way to start every day: with the daily Cloud in your inbox, along with an explanation of what, where and why it is, and often a few whimsical asides.
The London-based Cloud Appreciation Society people are among my favorite know-it-all’s on the planet.
(Author photo)
So after this flyaway photo, I’ll quit for now. But I hereby rest my case. The sky’s not just the limit, it’s the invitation to wonder. To exhale.
Here’s to an uplifting day ahead. Week ahead. Just look up.
(Because I Find WordPress more and more difficult to manage — after all these years of posting on WordPress — I don’t manage to get here often. You’re more than welcome to visit my Substack, franmorelandjohns.substack, com; it’s free. Meanwhile, thanks for reading any of these thoughts.)
A PERILOUS, NOSTALGIC, OCCASIONALLY HILARIOUS JOURNEY TO CORNWALL
“Tinners’ Way” near Penzance, Cornwall (Author photo)
It is entirely legal to take someone’s ashes (“cremains,” in creepy cremation society lingo) from the U.S. to the U.K. All you need are a death certificate and a letter from the cremation people — details that had not occurred to me until I was leaving for the airport.
Oh, well.
(I am not sure what laws I recently broke, or what the statute of limitations for sending me off into London Tower may be, so let’s just keep this story between us friends. Including any TSA people or customs agents who may be reading along.)
A piece of my husband’s San Francisco soul was always in Cornwall. Generations of ancestors walked those ancient pathways in the pre-dawn darkness, headed deep underground into the mines that, long abandoned now, still dot the landscape.
So it’s been in the back of my mind, ever since my good husband Bud died in 2019, to take some of his ashes back to The Fatherland. And thus it was that I found myself landing at London’s Heathrow Airport with two small vials of his earthly remains plus a quart-size baggie, triple-baggie’d just to be safe, with more. And no requisite documentation. It was not that I don’t still have multiple copies of the death certificate, or that I couldn’t have found the name of those cremation people we signed up with several decades ago if it had occurred to me. It had just not occurred, and this was an inconvenient time to run back to the apartment and get things.
An extremely polite customs man motioned me aside, as my carry-on emerged from the scanner. It was then that I first realized — since I wasn’t smuggling any controlled substances or sneaking California produce into the country — that Bud’s ashes were at risk of remaining at Heathrow Airport forever, rather than scattered on hallowed Cornish fields. Any doubts about this possibility were erased when the young man gently lifted the baggie from its comfortable space and laid it on the table. Wordlessly, he began to run a small scanner back and forth across it.
Never say I can’t think on my feet, even after they’ve just gone through the airport scanner. I thought: Hmmm. He wasn’t at all concerned with the vials. As it happened, I’d found little 4-oz clear plastic tubes somewhere in an assortment of never-used beauty containers, so they bore labels that said “Skin cleanser” and “Conditioner.” The customs agent, now having pulled out an even more serious-looking scanner, was carefully running it back and forth, occasionally looking up with a pleasant expression.
I said something offhand about ashes used in facial cleaning. He said something, still with a pleasant expression, about “having to be certain about inorganic material.” (Inorganic? One’s mortal ashes?) To be honest (now, at least,) I think both of us still had questions. But he just carefully placed the baggies back where they had been and closed my suitcase. I was on my way, all ashes with me.
The person who would enjoy this story most of anyone I know is my late husband. I choose to believe he is, in some inorganic state, enjoying it on some celestial cloud.
Low tide at the harbor, St Ives (Author photo)
I met my daughter Sandy at Heathrow and we splurged on a driver to travel the utterly gorgeous countryside that Bud and I had enjoyed together so many times. Without that excellent assistant (Thanks, Sabir!) there is no way we would have found our AirB&B cottage above the harbor in St Ives, nestled among other cottages and shops in the labyrinth of steep, winding cobblestone alleys of this charming fishing village — where I had always stayed with Bud, who knew his way around. I did not; I still do not.
We spent a day or two readjusting our inner time clocks and enjoying St Ives, Cornwall. It was then time for the first half of the mission: spreading a few ashes in the sculpture garden of the English artist Dame Barbara Hepworth, who lived and worked in St Ives from the beginning of World War II until her death — in a fire in her studio in 1975.
The Hepworth Museum and sculpture garden are a quick walk from the Tate St Ives Museum, one of my favorite museums in the United Kingdom. They adjoin her former studio, now preserved and feeling as if she just left for a spot of afternoon tea.
I managed to get myself into the mirror in the framed collage (Author photo)
Hepworth moved to St Ives in 1939 with her husband, the painter and sculptor Ben Nicholson (and their 5-year-old triplets, two sons and a daughter,) and lived there until her death in an accidental fire in the studio in 1975. Their story, and the stories of other artists who flourished in that time and place, are fascinating. As is the adjacent sculpture garden serene in its surrounding lush greenery, which was a haven for Bud and me.
But do the present-day managers of it all welcome scatterers of ashes? We thought it unwise to ask. So, after making sure no other visitors were nearby and giving thanks that the winds had subsided, we each quietly emptied a vial behind a Hepworth sculpture. It felt right.
Sandy after finishing her scattering task (Author photo)
The next day it was on to find the right spot for the final resting place of the rest of Bud’s ashes, grateful that it had not been Heathrow Airport after all.
We found another intrepid driver (ask for Barry) to tour us around the countryside, and specifically to get us to a remote area of the Tinners’ Way — a 16-mile stretch of pathway along the coast where generations of miners walked on their way to work. Bud and I covered much of it, a few miles at a time, on visits to Cornwall.
Again, as informed, agreeable and charming as we found Cornish-native Barry to be, we thought that trying to explain the ashes mission was a story too far. Having made it through customs, I also didn’t want to risk losing my precious cargo to HRH Charles III’s National Trust, which maintains the landscape. So we just said we wanted to do a walk of a mile or so, at some remote point.
Along the Tinners’ Way, Cornwall (Author photo)
There are plenty of remote points along the Tinners’ Way. We found one (above) that seemed right.
And there, in the tall grasses and the rocky soil of Cornwall, lie a few of the mortal remains of this last generation of Johns’. May they rest in peace.
That’s the word — so you needn’t read any farther if you’re in a hurry. But of course hurrying isn’t great for successful aging either. Calm is. Kindness is. Today’s word, however, is the oft-ignored secret.
When one passes 90 — as I did, ahem, several years ago — one starts getting these What’s your secret questions, as if age somehow brought wisdom and the answers to all of the world’s queries. Spoiler alert: it does not. It does, however, bring teeny little insights and this is one —
Just about the best thing in the world for your blood pressure, heart rate, brain cells and general physiology is the sense of Enough. This day is enough, this latte and peanut butter cookie are enough, this quiet moment in the middle of universal angst is enough.
I didn’t wake up with a light bulb over my head on this; I simply began to recognize the general sufficiency, the enough-ness of things.
For instance. I love traveling and exploring, especially hiking out-of-the-way trails, visiting museums and galleries and the British Library, cities in general. One day I reflected upon the reality that I will never hike the Himalayas, or visit Sidney or Reykjavik — and that is perfectly okay. I’ve had some glorious times at the Musée d’Orsay, wandering around Shanghai and St. Petersburg or awestruck by the beauty of Iguaçu Falls. Enough.
It doesn’t indicate The End! I’m currently looking forward to a return trip to ruggedly beautiful Cornwall soon, including a visit to my favorite museum in the U.K. (apologies to numerous second-favorites) the Tate St Ives. I’ll be taking some of my husband’s ashes back to the land of his ancestors, who worked in the mines for generations — that’s likely to be another essay. Enough, though, simply means it’s good, all is well, breathe. Be grateful.
The arts are a category all their own. One problem with living in San Francisco, at least as a nonagenarian, is that you just can’t do it all. For decades I delighted in the SF Contemporary Music Players, SFJazz, Cal Performances and our multiple marvelous museums and galleries. I do still subscribe to the two San Francisco Symphony seats husband Bud had worked his way into (Second Row, Right Terrace, directly above the bass section) because it would just feel traitorous to let them go. But two friends now split the series with me, divvying up the twelve performances. It’s enough. And whenever I find an hour or two to hang out at MoMA or one of the other great museums I still support it feels like a glorious gift; I do not meditate on the recent show I totally missed.
Nonagenarianism is, IMHO, a good time to forgive oneself for roads not taken and opportunities passed up — meanwhile counting the blessings of remaining activities without dipping into either sorrowful or smug.
The one exception to all of the above, In My further Humble Opinion, is the writing game. If one happens to love writing better than eating (and I’m not even getting started on San Francisco’s dining scene, intimate knowledge of which was de rigueur in years past,) there are never enough hours in the day to finish whatever literary projects are underway. There are always too many essays to work on, books and articles still in progress, letters (despite the computer having largely replaced the cursive) to be written, stamped & mailed, and occasional social media commentaries waiting to be posted. Because, after all, there’s still this astonishing, bewildering, challenging, intriguing, enchanting thing called life going on. Day after day.
Which is enough.
# # #
Because WordPress has become bewildering, I am most often on Substack these days, where you’re welcome to become a free subscriber (or just to visit whenever: https://franmorelandjohns.substack.com)
In the 1990s I led an HIV Support Group that was officially part of my church and comprised of an evershifting number of men I loved best of any motley crew I’ve ever known. They were of every known religion and degree of irreverence. Jim, the last surviving member of the clan, died of natural causes last year, having dodged AIDS along with his partner; partner Richard was lost to a freaky post-surgery accident more than a dozen years ago.
Every new disastrou healthcare headline reminds me of Jim.
Jim was the #1 source of my pandemic survival. Having lost my husband in 2019, not that long after Richard had died, the two of us found a spectacular anti-loneliness mechanism for negotiating those pandemic days . . . and eventually, years.
Mobility-challenged from a long-ago case of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Jim was pretty much confined to the third floor apartment he and Richard had shared for decades. As it happened, their place was on one of the steepest blocks of San Francisco’s Mason Street, making its front window almost level with the sidewalk a few yards uphill. I would stand precariously on the sidewalk while he leaned out his window; he always promised to call 911 if I lost my balance so they could dredge the Bay for my body after it rolled downhill and into the waters.
To be confessionally honest, toward the end of the pandemic I did sneak inside a couple of times for us to remember what indoor face-to-face encounters had been like in days gone by.
In those olden days Jim and I had witnessed the worst of the AIDS pandemic and, finally, its slow but eventual end. We remembered one longtime member of the AIDS Group who said, at what would be our last formal gathering, “I’ve spent more than a decade focusing on death; now I just want to focus on living for a while.”
That shift from death to life was thanks to development of antiretroviral therapies that slowly transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic illness. It was work that required public and private cooperation and the dedicated efforts of local, state and national agencies. It led, eventually, to San Francisco’s being at the forefront of a global challenge to “Get to Zero” — zero new HIV cases, zero deaths and zero stigma. In three decades there has been almost uninterrupted progress toward this lofty but attainable goal.
The current administration has thrown everything into reverse.
Some $8 million have been stripped just from local agencies doing this humanitarian work. If you can look up the chain to the destruction of science-based agencies and communities all the way to the formerly unequalled CDC without tears you must be without a heart.
Our old HIV Group had one confirmed curmudgeon who regularly proclaimed there was no hope for himself or the world. Everybody else would find something that made that one day worth living and would wear ourselves out saying “C’mon, Tom. One day there’s going to be a cure. A vaccine. A treatment.” Tom died early on, angry and cursing fate as with so many young men who had good reaason to curse.
When Jim and I talked about those olden days, as we invariably did, we often joked about how Tom had been proven wrong, because vaccines and treatments were indeed on the way to eradicating the scourge of HIV-AIDS; and how Tom would’ve scoffed and said, “Just wait. Something’s going to screw it all up.” I sorely need a chance to joke around with Jim today.
So where, in this column that regularly looks for good news, is the good news for the future of American health?
“Don’t quote me,” said another old friend recently — so of course I’m quoting him, “but there are sane scientists everywhere who are just waiting out the ignoramuses in charge of our national health today. We’re still moving forward. Despite the tragic losses of the last year, science is still science and those of us comnitted to it are not going to give up. We’ll get to zero.” He teaches at a prestigious California university. He’s tenured. He believes most who have lost their good jobs will come back once U.S. healthcare gets back on track.
RIP Jim and Richard and Tom and so many beloved others. We’re on a dark detour but we’ll still Get To Zero.
How I found the perfect tree, and regained the holiday spirit
(Author photo)
OK, it’s not your grandmother’s Christmas tree; it’s a pillow. But it was a gift from a favorite friend last year, and when I pulled the holiday box down off the shelf, there it was on top, just begging to be The Tree.
How could I not?
If ever proof was needed for that old truism, ‘The bigger your children, the smaller your tree,’ I’m it. With the kids long grown and my enthusiasm for dealing with tinsel, glitter, angel hair and tangled strings of lights correspondingly diminished I was about to be tree-less several years ago. My faraway daughter couldn’t handle this idea, and promptly sent a lovely, if artificial, little three-foot-tall tree complete with lights already circling its piney green limbs and miniature baubles ready for hanging. The problem? Assembly required. I finally threw a party for a half-dozen dextrous friends and after several bottles of wine (I served, they drank because I don’t any more) we got it done.
I had to work through my inborn antipathy to artificial trees, but I became downright fond of the little faux pine with its twinkling lights and tiny baubles. The initial assembly was the most complicated; after that it folded back into its box and required only a few tricky openings-up and fittings-together to reappear the next holiday season. A small hassle to start the season.
It’s been a fine tree. I’ve had some great tree-assembly parties. But after the daily chaos of the past year I could not deal with even minimal holiday stress in my own home. I walked to town to soak up the wonders of the season at San Francisco’s Union Square:
(Author photo)
The Union Square tree is a beauty, though I do believe it’s artificial too, and you’d think we might have sprung for a giant spruce in a forest that needed to be thinned. Furthermore, couldn’t the Union Square people also strike a deal with whoever’s in charge of the giant billboard featuring a handsome hunk who seems to be stressing out over the scene? For a while there my Christmas spirit faltered.
I bought a cup of white chocolate mocha and sat down at an outdoor table with a couple from Denver who brought my spirits right back up. Their tree was up and decorated back home, and their children and grandchildren would all be coming, but they were having a holiday getaway first and they love San Francisco. I love tourists who love San Francisco.
I walked back home and contemplated the pillow-tree. Made of the softest velvet imaginable, it begs to be stroked. If you snuggle down on the sofa with a good book, it is happy to rest against your cheek. Even its little Star of Bethlehem is soft and cushy.
THIS YEAR’S INTERFAITH BREAKFAST MESSAGE: WE’RE ALL CHILDREN OF THE SAME GOD
Hoisting our new copies of the Constitution (Author photo)
The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast is pretty much my favorite morning of every year. You get prayed over in every known religion and a few you probably never heard of; it’ll just about carry you through the next 364 days. It is sponsored annually by the San Francisco Interfaith Council.
This was the 25th annual such event. The first one — in 1998 — I remember well; we had four or five tables. It’s grown ever since (excepting the two pandemic years) into today’s over-capacity crowd; but who’s counting? The Fire Chief was among the dignitaries. Others ranged from Lt Gov Eleni Kounalakis to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (we’re her people, after all) to local committee chairs and union officials and everyone in between.
These events have themes — generally falling within the faith/hope/love spectrum. This year it was Sanctuary: A San Francisco Value. “San Francisco Values” is not a pejorative term around here.
In accordance with the theme, every speaker or participant at the prayer breakfast led off with his or her immigrant ancestry. I lost track after a while. But almost every one cited immigrant parents, grandparents &/or recent kinfolk who had arrived on these shores as refugees from the Holocaust or from genocide or persecutions beyond imagination. Seeking sanctuary.
The parallel prayers — Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim and other — then used their various languages to point out that we’re all children of the same god, by whatever name. In other words, brothers and sisters, immigrants all.
Said one speaker, “Sanctuary means a place of refuge, a sacred space.”
“The protection of others is a divine trust,” said a Muslim speaker.
“The Buddhist call to compassion results in gratitude,” noted another.
The morning swag was a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Early on we were invited to hoist our Constitutions high, just to make a point. It’s actually pretty good reading. I leafed through my new copy before starting this report, impressed once again by some of the niceties like co-equal branches of government, powers of the Congress, guarantees of individual freedoms etc that have not been brightly evident this year.
Brightly evident at the 25th Annual SFIC Prayer Breakfast: Good food, good vibes, good will to all. Immigrants included.
These are Blue Moon times. Still trying to get used to the early dark, still trying to readjust to the time-change jolt, I for one have been looking for some relief — any relief please — from the chaos of life.
Enter the moon. Its waxing and waning in spectacular beauty have brought the best kind of balm.
A few nights ago San Francisco City Hall even pitched in to help, turning itself blue to create this photo op as captured (below) from Fulton Street at the San Francisco Ballet building. I mean. Who could ask for anything more? And then came more!
According to the folklore of the Ladin people, inhabitants of villages scattered across the Dolomite valleys of northern Italy, a young prince of long ago married a woman from the Moon, and the two lived together happily on the Dolomites. Happily, but not forever after.
Over time, the pale peaks of the mountains made the princess pine for the Moon, and she left her bridegroom to go back home.
The prince, lonely and desolate, went for a walk in the woods, where he met a gnome. The two came up with a Plan: the gnome would paint the sides of the mountains in beautiful colors — colors shiny and blue enough to change the mind of the missing maiden.
Dave Wood, friend of Charles McDonald (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 55,390), visited the Dolomites in northern Italy, the cool blue peaks echoed the tones of the Altocumulus stratiformis undulatus sky.
And it worked!
Possibly comforted by the blues reminiscent of her home, the Moon princess returned, and the two lived happily ever after.
Only a tale, you say? Maybe you’ve not been to the Dolomites lately. (I surely have not.) But thanks to Members and friends of the Cloud Appreciation Society — which keeps one eye on the Moon — the photo above might change your mind.
At the very least, it offers this assurance: Whatever passing chaos we earthlings might create, the Moon and the mountains are here for the everlasting.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE HAPPILY BRIGHTENING THE COUNTRY, WITH CANDLES AND DANCE, SONGS AND JOY. AND A LITTLE LAUGHTER
Artwork by Laura Borealis (Used with permission)
Bring your neighbors. Bring your children. Bring your love for this country and let it shine.
This is my kind of an invitation. It was, actually, an invitation to join a recent event in Atlanta titled Unite in Light. Atlanta chooses light in these dark times for our democracy
Neighbors brought their children, and other neighbors. Children hoisted signs. Ordinary people came out for an extraordinary celebration, a ribbon of light stretching miles across the city from midtown to Stone Mountain.
“With our lights, signs and waves and the supportive honks of passing cars,” wrote one participant, Jane Branscomb, “Atlanta showed up for unity and democracy over division and tyranny.”
Jane Branscomb photo
Across the country in Seattle another group circled Green Lake, holding hands “in a giant embrace of our democracy and community.”
Melinda Branscomb (yes, they’re sisters) has a ukelele protest group, Ukes Uprising, which didn’t play at that one, but I’m told there was a “Dance for Democracy” group who brought music and danced for those encircling the lake. The whole encircling idea was simply to “celebrate the values we stand for with signs, song, and dance.”
Photo courtesy of Melinda Branscomb (far left)
The Ukes Uprising (above) musicians are not a marching band — though who knows? — so they station themselves, instead, at strategic points along protest routes. At the last No Kings Day, for example, they stationed themselves at the light rail station exit nearest to the march starting point. “Literally tens of thousands of arriving protesters walked past us,” Melinda recalls, “and folks smiled and sang along as they passed.” An estimated 70,000 singing, dancing Seattleites took part in that event.
It’ll happen again all across the country on October 18: No Kings Day #2. On the last No Kings Day in San Francisco — where people singing and dancing on the streets can usually be found somewhere if you just look — my new friend Tylor (“with an O, people always get that wrong”) was skipping along with his rainbow cape flowing behind and his Human Rights sign waving on high.
Author photo
Tylor (above) mainly laughs a lot — and it’s hard not to laugh along.
This is what I wish our Narcissist-in-Chief could figure out: laughing and loving, singing and dancing, holding hands — those are the ties that bind. And they will bind this country together again.
Officially, No Kings Day (there’s one near you!) is a peaceful national day of action in support of reproductive freedom, democracy, and accountability. A rally against authoritarianism. Unofficially it’s just a chance to get together with friends and strangers to raise candles, hoist signs, sing and dance and laugh a little. In support of a life-or-death movement.
Unfortunately, N-i-C Trump does not laugh. Oh, he makes unfunny jokes if there’s a barb in them, but his mama apparently never taught him the difference between humor and cruelty.
Cruelty never inspired people to line the streets with candles and song. Laughter overcomes humorlessness. Peaceful protest wins out over masked militias. Sometimes, in these dark days, phrases like these only sound like platitudes. But then the candles come out in Atlanta and the ukeleles tune up in Seattle and laughter ripples across San Francisco.
